


All The Devil's Men

by hilaryfaye



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon Queer Relationship, Domestic Violence, F/F, M/M, Marriage of Convenience, Murder, Romance, Science Fiction, Theocracy, Western
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 09:38:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 157,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10919193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hilaryfaye/pseuds/hilaryfaye
Summary: For generations, the church and the Bishop's Men have maintained order in the far-flung colony of the New Covenant. A brutal six-year war between the church and a heretical movement led by a man named John Metzger has left James Finnbar looking for a place to rebuild his life, somewhere he won't be found.What he finds is Carlston, a frontier mining town owned by the unmarried, cross-dressing Ada Carl, a woman who isn't above a good old fashioned barter:work for me, and I won't collect the price on your head.As an uneasy friendship grows between the two, founded on the shared circumstance of being queer in a society that would deny they even exist, neither Ada or James is without their demons, and though the town rests on the edge of civilization, it is only a matter of time before their pasts catch up to them, and consume the fragile balance struck in the temporary haven of Carlston.





	1. Heretics & Vagabonds

The train tracks ended in Mallory, three days walk on a dirt road from Carlston. Mallory was supposed to be the end of proper civilization, Carlston was—at best—nothing more than a frontier town. An overgrown mining operation that had nearly failed three times because of drought.

Or at least, that’s what the man too-eager to sell him whiskey told him. “What’s your name again?”

“Finnbar,” he said. The name still felt strange when he said it, but it came more naturally to answer to it, now. _James Finnbar_ was a man nobody had heard of, a man nobody had a reason to look twice at. James Finnbar was exactly who he needed to be.

“You know Carlston’s owned by a woman?” the whiskey seller asked him. His gums were stained blue from chewing Ara leaves, it gave his breath a rotten-sweet smell. “Some spinster as dresses in men’s clothes and calls herself ‘landowner.’”

“So I’ve heard.” He had also heard the place was prospering, that Ada Carl didn’t just keep her men happy with liquor and brothels but with fair wages, that Carlston could always use extra hands. “How is the road, though? Any trouble with thieves?”

“Not much,” the seller told him reluctantly. “I been there a few times, never had any trouble once I crossed into Carlston territory. Carl woman keeps a tight grip on goings on, got no tolerance for thievery or any other trouble. Likes her town peaceable-like. Still, wouldn’t hardly waste my time there. Don’t even have a proper church, their preacher holds services in the tavern.”

James wasn’t interested in church services but he wasn’t about to say so. “Is there any way to get there faster than walking?”

The whiskey seller sighed and jerked his thumb toward an aged black cargo truck, covered in a thick layer of red dust. “You’ll be wantin’ Mr. Corbley. He’s Carl’s right-hand man.” The whiskey seller spit on the ground, as if to ward off bad luck just at invoking Corbley’s name. “For all the good that’ll do you.”

James only had the two bags. It was all he had been able to take, before the Bishop’s Men had descended on them and a sputtering truck held together with naught more than prayers had carried him into the night. The way he figured, Carlston was as far away from the war’s end as he could get, and not a bad place to learn to fit his new name.

He soon discovered the reason for the whiskey seller’s suspicion of Mr. Corbley. Corbley stood no higher than about five feet, covered entirely in rust-red scales. He wore a man’s shirt and trousers that were both quite obviously too big, and had four yellow eyes on a pointed, lizard-like face. He was tying down a tarp over the frame on the back of the truck.

“Mr. Corbley?”

Corbley looked James up and down, inner eyelids blinking in rapid succession. “You goin’ to Carlston?”

James nodded. “Yes, I’m looking for work.”

Corbley grimaced at his formal speech. “Your name?”

“James Finnbar.” Nobody worth paying attention to, nobody familiar.

Corbley nodded at the cab. “Go ahead and get in. I’m just about ready to leave.”

The interior of the truck smelled like burnt grass and grease. Corbley pulled himself into the driver’s seat with a grunt, clawed fingers wrapping around the wheel. “Can’t ever stay long at the station,” he muttered. “Mr. Hansen don’t like having me in Mallory. Finds me ‘upsetting.’” Corbley rolled his eyes, nostrils flaring.

“You’re Kelchak, yes?”

“You a schoolteacher or you talk like that just to annoy me?” Corbley started the truck, raising his voice to be heard over the motor.

“You’re a long way from Kelchak territory.” He had a little experience with the Kelchak, from trade and occasional border run ins, but for the most part they kept to their own settlements and humans kept to theirs. They were both colonizers far from the worlds that had brought them, and their dealings with each other were limited.

“And James Finnbar ain’t your real name, as Miss Carl will want to know.” Corbley tipped his chin up, seeming to stare down the entire length of his face to look at the road. “Enough people been giving me fake names I can hear it now, I reckon.”

James stared at him, and Corbley smiled, baring rows of needle-sharp ivory teeth. “War, right? You’re some heretic come to hide from your sins.”

James held his voice level through no small amount of will. “Corbley isn’t a Kelchak name.”

“You’re not the only one in Carlston as doesn’t wanna be found.” Corbley picked at something in his teeth with one hand. “Miss Carl was th’one as gave me my new name.”

“I was told you’re Miss Carl’s right hand.”

Corbley made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Am that, I suppose. Foreman, bookkeeper, whatever she needs me to be.”

“Why, then, does she have you out running errands?”

“Special cargo, this. Miss Carl wouldn’t trust it to nobody else. ‘Sides,”—two yellow eyes slid to settle on him—“she likes me to get first look at strays like you.”

Stray. So that’s what he was now, a vagrant and a beggar. “I heard there was good work to be had in Carlston.”

“ ‘Magine that wasn’t all you heard.” Corbley’s breath hissed between his teeth. “You come hearin’ about wealth and a bounty of liquor and brothels, I bet.”

“It certainly wasn’t discouraging.” James glanced out the window, watching Mallory’s wheat fields roll by, the cloud of dust kicking up behind them on the road.

“You’re older’n most as come to Carlston,” Corbley said. “Course, you may not be old as I think you are, you humans all age different. Last time I was in Mallory I met a bald one was only thirty!” Corbley laughed at that, slapping the wheel. “How old are ya, anyway? Understand as you humans find that rude but I can’t damn tell.”

“Forty-five,” he said. Most thought he was older, he’d gone grey fairly young.

“Ah, not that old, then. If you were Kelchak I’d be calling you ‘boy.’” Corbley laughed again. “Me, I’m seventy, and there’s still some Kelchak as’d call me young.”

James considered that perhaps he should have walked.

“Hope you didn’t come for mine work,” Corbley said. “We’ve got too many miners as it is. Was you a miner before?” James shook his head. “You ain’t a schoolteacher, are ya? We do have need of one, now there’s brats as are the right age for schooling.”

“I haven’t the patience for children.”

“Fool answer, that, you’d have been comfortable as a teacher. What do you do, then?”

“I was a field worker, before the war. A builder, before that.” Really, he had done whatever work he could find, whatever would keep him fed.

Corbley scoffed. “I was you, I’d’a said I was a teacher.”

Annoyed, James asked, “Does Miss Carl ask you to personally review all her new employees?”

“You ain’t an employee yet. I’m just deciding whether or not you’re worth Miss Carl’s time. Way I figure right now, she’s only gonna wanna look at ya because I’ll tell her you’re a heretic.”

“I never said I was a heretic.” As far as anyone was concerned, James Finnbar had never been accused of heresy.

“Never denied it, neither.” The truck hit a bump in the road and Corbley hissed. James thought he heard a loud curse come from the back of the truck.

“Are you carrying people?”

Corbley ignored him. “Miss Carl’s careful about those she takes in, yeah? ‘Specially now that the war’s over and we’ve got heretics hiding from the law. She wants to know just who’s hiding from what.”

James wondered if he would have to fight, to run. “Why not just turn me over for a bounty?”

“Why? You got a big one?” Corbley eyed him, as if trying to guess who he might be, what he might have done, what price might be on his head. “Miss Carl will decide what to do with you. Doubt she’ll hand you over for bounty, though. She don’t want the church meddling too much in her business.”

James looked away out the window, letting out a breath.

He knew the end of Mallory by the abrupt end of the wheat fields, falling into forest. He was surprised to see they were native trees, with ash-pale bark and pale blue leaves. Blue-tinged native weeds grew up thick along the edges of the road. “Was this wilderness before Miss Carl purchased the land?”

“Good as,” Corbley told him. “Don’t get really wild ‘til you get south of here, though. Out there—there, you might get killed.”

The forest broke into crop fields, which seemed to be tended to by as many women as men, who paid little attention to the passing of Corbley’s truck. Huge irrigation tanks sat along the edge of the fields, their paint faded but otherwise new and uniform, not showing any signs of rust. He saw smaller rain tanks as they drew nearer to the town, anchored to the sides of buildings, tops sealed tight against the dry season sun.

The buildings, he noticed, were all elevated three or four feet off the ground on sturdy posts.

“Do you have much trouble with floods in the wet season?”

Corbley nodded. “Can’t run the mines til the rains are over, most times, or grow anything outside the greenhouses. Good news is our tanks stay full enough to protect us from most droughts. Good for the fields, too, what with all the river mud.”

Corbley brought the truck up through the main street, and James took stock of the place. It had all the beginnings of a proper town, shops and taverns and a post building. A few called out greetings to Corbley, who returned them with a wave. He seemed to be well-liked, and James had to wonder if Miss Carl shared his popularity.

The building Corbley stopped in front of was near the end of the street, with doors painted red. He coughed and spit out the window, and turned his gaze on James. “You, stay put.” He climbed out of the truck and James watched from the mirror as he went around to the back, pulling up the tarp.

A dozen or so young men in nice clothes hopped out, smiling and laughing as they stretched their legs and looked around, carrying travel bags up through the red doors.

“This is a brothel,” he said, when Corbley came back. “She sent you to bring back whores.”

Corbley glanced at him. “Thought you knew about the brothels.”

“I wasn’t expecting… that.” Young men, and so many of them. There were always some around, in any town, but not so openly.

“S’pose now’s as good a time as any to tell you that we take a policy of discretion about the brothel. You don’t talk about what anybody else does there and they don’t talk about you. Place like this caters to all kinds of tastes, Mr. Finnbar. They came for money, same as you.”

“How much of their money goes right back into Miss Carl’s pocket?”

“See, there, that’s why you heretics get yourself in trouble now, isn’t it? It’s ‘cause ya can’t help but question the way things are. Ya start with the landowners ‘n before you know it you’re challenging the church, ‘n all hell breaks loose.”

“And what the hell do you know about the church?” James asked, starting to lose his patience.

“Been here long enough to know a few things, Mr. Finnbar.” He bobbed his head in something like a nod. “Been here long enough to know I don’t blame ya, but you’re gonna get yourself killed, and if you’re gonna do that, ya might as well have stayed wherever you came from.”

“I don’t know that there’s even anything left where I came from.”

Corbley apparently had nothing to say about that.

Miss Carl’s house was at the south end of town, overlooking the river and the bridge to the fields just beyond. The only remarkable thing about it was its sheer size, easily the largest of the houses, and perhaps because of its proximity to the river its bottom floor was elevated six feet from the ground, the posts beneath it showing signs of having been repaired, replaced, and reinforced over the years.

The shaded porch wrapped around the whole of the house, and boasted a table and chairs, at which two women were sitting, looking up as the truck approached. One, dark-faced and with her hair braided at the scalp, wore a deep blue dress and was shuffling a deck of playing cards. The other was sun-tanned, dressed in a man’s suit, with her sleek black hair in a knot at the nape of her neck. She was working at something on a screen in front of her, tapping the stylus idly against her palm while she read.

This, then, was Ada Carl.

She was a good ten to fifteen years younger than he had expected, certainly no older than her late twenties. She pushed the screen back as Corbley got out of the car, gesturing for James to do the same and follow him. “Your trip was uneventful, I hope, Mr. Corbley.”

Corbley jogged up the steps to the porch. “Everyone home and accounted for, Miss. A few suspicious looks, but otherwise no trouble.”

James hung back by the top of the steps, assessing the young landowner. The suit was old, but well-kept, the dark fibers only a little faded. The collar of her shirt was pressed, and the cuff links on her sleeves he suspected were real silver, but her appearance could not have been said to be excessive. Expensive, yes, but not unconscionably so.

“This one doesn’t look much like a brothel boy,” she said, finally looking at James. “Unless the times have changed that much in the east settlements.”

“He’s just a stray,” Corbley said, leaning up against the wall. “Calls himself James Finnbar.”

“And why am I looking at Mr. Finnbar?” Carl slung her arm over the back of her chair, looking at him the way she might a mildly interesting bird.

“I fought in the war, Miss,” James said, not about to let Corbley call him a heretic again.

“The losing side, from the looks of you.” Carl put a finger to her lips, regarding him thoughtfully. “Is there a price on your head, Mr. Finnbar? I’d advise you not to lie to me. I don’t take well to liars.” The smile she gave was a practiced one, devoid of any meaning.

James had never been much of a liar. “Yes, Miss Carl. A not insignificant one.”

Carl looked at Corbley, who shrugged. She stood, hands loosely in her pockets. “What kind of work do you do, exactly?”

“I’ve some skill as a builder, but I’ll do whatever’s needed. I don’t want to cause you trouble, Miss Carl, I only came for a fresh start.” He held his hat in his hands, trying to swallow down his resentment at having to beg for work again, at being once more at the mercy of a landowner.

“And what did you do during the war, might I ask?”

The silence as James considered his answer felt like a weight around his neck. Carl did not press or look away, she only gazed expectantly at him. “I held a command position, Miss.”

Her eyebrows rose at that, but other than that she held her reaction in check. “That’s no small thing.” She folded her arms, considering him. Without turning, she said, “Ester?”

The other woman had pulled a card from her deck and laid it on the table. The Ace of Diamonds. “You’ve already reached a conclusion. I’ve nothing to say against it.”

Carl turned her head ever so slightly to look at the card. “You’re in luck, Mr. Finnbar,” she said. “I have work for you that is much more significant than building work.” She nodded toward the town. “As you can see, Carlston has become somewhat more than a mining camp. When it was only miners and brothel workers I had very little trouble maintaining order. However, I find myself in need of… extra hands, when it comes to maintaining this place as it ought to be.”

James kept quiet, wary of whatever she was asking.

“What I need you to do is simply to keep the peace.”

“You want me to enforce your law.”

“You make me sound like a tyrant,” she said. “What I want is simple, Mr. Finnbar. I have no tolerance for men who beat their wives or children, nor those who would abuse my brothel workers. It has no longer become feasible for me to handle all these matters on my own, but a man like yourself may make more of an impression on those sorts of men—myself being much less physically intimidating.” She smiled again. “Surely that doesn’t offend your principles?”

“I’d question your motive in making a wanted man your enforcer, Miss Carl, and I’d ask how exactly it is you’ve handled these matters in the past.”

A breeze stirred the dry air, and rustled the wooden chimes hung at the corner of the porch. Carl turned to look at the town, her hand on the porch rail. “To the first, I’ll tell you I’ve no need of bounty money, but you have a need of keeping away from the firing squad. I think that should be sufficient motivation for you to do what I ask, or do you disagree?”

She had him dangling on a string and they both knew it. There was nowhere he could go, except into the wilderness. She would hold that bounty over his head and make him dance like a puppet. “No, Miss Carl, I suppose I don’t.”

“Then we’re in agreement. To your second question, Mr. Finnbar—I’ve found that making a man dig his own grave and putting a bullet through the back of his head is the most efficient way of preventing him from further abusing his wife.” She straightened, looking up at him. “You’ve done and seen worse in the war, I’m sure. So do we have an arrangement?” She extended her hand to him, all bright wide eyes and pretty smile that must have fooled a dozen men into thinking they would get something more from her.

If he shook her hand he was agreeing to be her pawn. If he refused, she could simply have Mr. Corbley return him to the Bishop’s Men and reap the rewards.

He had not come all this way just to die.

She smiled when he grasped her hand. “Mr. Corbley will find lodgings for you. We’ve a town meeting in Perkins’ Tavern every Saturday evening, and church there on Sundays. Welcome to Carlston, Mr. Finnbar.”


	2. Sacrifice

Perkins’ Tavern held more people than it ought to have, tables pushed against the wall and chairs belonging to those who came early enough to claim them. Most appeared to be in their Sunday best, all people that knew each other and could spot a newcomer at thirty paces. Though, James supposed, they would have looked that way at anyone that Miss Carl brought in at her side.

She had insisted on his having new clothes. He would have a suit, too, but for now he had a fresh shirt and jacket, and the rest she had found acceptable enough for presentation. “You are my responsibility now, Mr. Finnbar, and I will not have you looking like any vagrant picked off the train.” 

He had spent the better part of three days under Miss Carl’s “supervision,” being given a place to sleep, shown the town and the layout of the estate, and being called to Miss Carl’s home and her office again and again. The first time was to be measured for new clothes, and thereafter it was to discuss the finer points of her legal policy, in as much as she had one. Her greatest concerns were of the abuse of women, children, and brothel workers—all of which equally earned the convicted a criminal grave, where their name would go accompanied by their crime.

“I’ll be going round with you for a few weeks,” she informed him. “The people know me, some of them I daresay even trust me. They’ll need time to adjust to you.” She seemed not quite able to keep still, her thoughts always half on the mine or the fields or the river or whose rent was owed.

The word ‘frenetic’ came to mind, although when her focus settled on any one thing, it was with an unsettling intensity—as he discovered when during one of their meetings, she stopped mid-sentence, attention caught by something out the window. Her manner shifted from the hollow pleasantness he had started to become accustomed to, the cheery smile replaced by something cold and hard. “Do you see that man down there, Mr. Finnbar? The sun-burned one with the brown hair and the unfortunate mustache.”

James joined her at the window. “I see him.”

“His name is Jacobsen. He’s in regular correspondence with my father, a fact that he believes I am unaware of.” She held the curtain back from the window, watching Jacobsen as he talked with other men down in the street. “My father would yank this place out from under me at the first opportunity. I don’t doubt that he’s looking for ways to do so now, and that Jacobsen’s job is to spy on me.” Carl looked up at him. “If you want me to uphold my end of our arrangement, Mr. Finnbar, then our first order of business is to make sure that there is absolutely nothing for Jacobsen to report.”

She dropped the curtain, stepping away from the window. “No men are permitted in or around my house after dark. You and I must be seen to maintain propriety in our interactions. If I were to be accused of anything, I could lose this place in a moment, everything I’ve worked for lost.” Carl dropped into the chair behind her desk, scowling. “I will not let this place be stolen from me.”

“Why not get rid of him?” James glanced at her. “You’re on the edge of civilization. You are the law.”

Carl’s look was calculated. “Is that the kind of justice you gave your men in the war?”

“To someone who was spying for the enemy? Without hesitation.” He moved away from the window. “I don’t relish the idea, I only don’t understand why you would let a known spy walk free.”

“For the simple reason that he has not done anything outside the law, Mr. Finnbar—mine, or the church’s–and I am not one for middle of the night murders. Not that you intended to suggest anything of the sort.” She pushed back from the desk, rising once more.

“Of course not, ma’am.” It would have been easy enough to carry out, though.

“That being said, I’m not against the idea of keeping a close eye on Jacobsen. If he slips up, Mr. Finnbar… I want to be there to catch it.”

“I understand.”

Carl stood turned away from him, hand over her mouth while she thought. “You will have to meet the preacher, first,” she said. “You are, after all, carrying out the law. I hope you can pretend to be a properly God-fearing man long enough for that.”

She handled people like snakes. She only trusted what she knew, and what she knew she could manipulate.

And at the moment, he suspected he was the most manipulatable element in Carlston, dressed and groomed to her taste, to be introduced to her town. James had the sense of being Carl’s newest pet, a plaything to be trotted out and admired until the novelty had worn off.

“Pastor Richards,” Carl called, crossing to the tavern’s small stage. “Just the man I was hoping to find.”

He was a slight man of about thirty, and from his flustered reaction at the sight of Carl, James supposed he was squarely under her thumb. “Miss Carl! To what do I owe the honor?”

“I must introduce you to Mr. Finnbar, just arrived here on Wednesday.” She acted as though she were a hostess, with a sun-bright smile. “He’ll be working as our sheriff.”

Pastor Richards did not seem terribly enthusiastic about this. He looked at James the way he might an unpleasant insect, though he quickly attempted to conceal it with a friendly smile. “Ah, hello, Mr. Finnbar. Where are you from, might I ask?”

“Johnstown, sir,” he answered, knowing it was a place with a respectable reputation, “though I’ve not lived there in quite some time.”

“What brings you to Carlston?” Richards asked, fishing for something to judge him by.

“Pastor,” Carl said, with a teasing smile. “He came for the same reason they all do—money.”

“That’s terribly cynical of you, Miss Carl,” Richards said, softening when he spoke to her.

Carl shrugged, unconcerned. “If you can find me a man who didn’t come here for money, Pastor, I’d be stunned. Besides yourself, of course.” She glanced at the clock. “It’ll be time to start the meeting now. Please, Mr. Finnbar, if you’ll come with me.”

“He has feelings for you,” James said as they left Pastor Richards behind.

Carl scoffed. “He has a fantasy of wedding me and making this a godly place belonging to the church, and me a good Christian woman in dresses.”

James looked back over his shoulder at Richards, who was watching him closely. “And he thinks me a threat to that.”

Carl’s voice verged on gleeful. “He took one look at you and saw a man who might lead an innocent woman away from the path of righteousness. Lord only knows what influence you might have on me.”

“Exactly what you wanted him to see.”

Carl smiled at him, a smile that seemed almost genuine. “The more he watches you, the less he watches me.”

He should have resented her for that, resented being led right into playing some game in which only she could see all the pieces, but his first instinct was to laugh. “No one warned me you were such a dangerous woman, Miss Carl.”

“You couldn’t have paid me a higher compliment, Mr. Finnbar.” She smoothed the front of her jacket, stepping to the center of the stage with the air of a showman. The room fell quiet, expectant. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, all broad smiles and open posture. “I have some important news.”

Beyond the initial discomfort of being presented to the town, and having everyone examine him as critically as they would a prize ox, the meeting was fairly dull. Most discussion centered on how Mr. Hansen was increasing the price of shipping Carlston ore through the Mallory station, and whether or not they should push for an expansion of the railway. James couldn’t quite tell whether they actually wanted the railway to reach Carlston or not—they wanted to ship the ore, and to have cheaper goods off the trains, but there seemed to be a suspicion that becoming more accessible to the rest of the colony would only bring trouble.

Pastor Richards, notably, was strongly in favor, and the more he pushed the more Carl pulled back from the idea, until she finally ended the discussion by saying that she would contact Mr. Hansen personally to come to an agreement about shipping prices.

The conversation then turned to the possibility of importing large livestock, and concerns of overfishing the river, and ran until dark, when Carl adjourned the meeting and spent a not inconsiderable amount of time speaking to people who approached her individually.

She seemed surprised when she noticed him still there, sitting just down from where she had been deep in conversation about barn building. They had been there long enough that the barkeep had even poured him a drink. “Have you taken it upon yourself to also serve as my bodyguard, Mr. Finnbar?”

He considered the last of his whiskey. “I was under the impression that for as long as I live on your land, I don’t do anything but by your order.”

Carl gazed at him for a long moment, as if she didn’t quite know what to make of him. “Go get some rest, Mr. Finnbar. We’ll both of us have a long day tomorrow.” 

#

Corbley walked with her back to the house, and Ada knew he was watching her closely. “Must you do that?” she finally asked, in the distance between the street and her house, where no one would hear them.

The solar lanterns glowed softly against the dark, making the stars nearly impossible to see. Ada remembered the first few months, when they were just starting out, and didn’t even have electricity beyond the generators for their trailers—how brilliant the skies were. The skies and that newfound sense of freedom had made up for how hard she had to fight for the men’s respect. Now she had their respect, and the stars were gone, and her responsibilities outweighed her freedoms more every day.

“You know who I think he is, Miss. His age, the look of ‘im, it’s all right, and they’ve no body to prove otherwise.”

“And you know I don’t doubt that you’re right.” She turned to look at Corbley, his eyes gone silvery under the lantern light. “You think I made the wrong choice?”

“You promised to keep ‘im alive, Miss, and I’m thinkin’ you won’t be able to keep that promise if anyone else figures it out.” Corbley glanced back the way they had come. “ ‘Specially now as you’ve made him the preacher’s enemy.”

“Pastor Richards isn’t a threat.” The man had been pushing to build a church building for four years and still hadn’t managed to get the agreement of his own flock. They knew as well as Ada did that to have a church building was to invite visiting church officials, statesmen, and they knew themselves to be a host of sinners and heretics who did best for themselves the less time the church spent looking in their direction.

“To you, maybe. But you know damn well he’ll be looking for any reason to get rid of Finnbar if he seriously thinks you’re interested, or the other way round. And if’n he finds out who Finnbar is and that you already suspected—”

“You’re counting on him being more clever than he is. He still believes Ester is a chaperon sent by my parents to ensure my chastity.” Ada folded her arms. “And if Finnbar can make it all the way out here without being discovered he must be able to take care of himself. What are you fussing so much for?”

Corbley sighed through his nose, nostrils flaring. “It’s one thing to not question all the heretics that turn up here after the war’s over, Miss. Miner turns out to be a heretic, who cares? Nobody’ll question your honor over one or half a dozen ore pigs. But you’re making Finnbar your eyes and ears in this place and that’s gonna cause trouble if he gets found out, and not just from the church.”

Ada looked up at the sky again, finding only a few scattered bright stars. “So if he’s found we sacrifice him on the altar. That’s the price of peace these days, isn’t it?”

Corbley stared at her, making a clicking sound in the back of his throat. “Girl I first met would never have said somethin’ like that.”

“Girl you first met knew full well she was making her profit off of the church’s war,” Ada replied. “Girl you first met already had heretical blood on her hands. Finnbar knew that when he came here.” She let out a breath. “You know the damned church was never supposed to be in charge in the first place.”

“So every heretic who comes this way tells me,” Corbley said. “And every one of ya so eager to blame the place you came from for the fact that your great-grandparents grandparents couldn’t run a place without mucking it up, but if you talk like that too much they’ll brand you a heretic just like the rest of ‘em and you won’t have a leg to stand on.”

“I know, I know, I—” Ada pressed a hand over her eyes, quelling her frustration. “As long as Finnbar does what he’s told and behaves himself, we’ll be fine. I’m confident of that. Suspicions or not, a roomful of people saw him tonight and nobody recognized him. And as for Pastor Richards, you know all I’ve got to do is smile at him, tell him how helpful he’s been to Carlston, and he’d forgive the devil of his sins.”

“But you’ll let him die if he’s found.”

She couldn’t see the river in the dark, but she could hear it, murmuring against the rocks. “I’ve had men die in floods and storms and mine collapses. Good men and bad men and men who’d never hurt a soul. God alone knows how many men have been killed with weapons made from Carlston ore, by heretics and the Bishop’s Men both. Finnbar’s not an innocent. I built this place on blood, Mr. Corbley, I can’t see how one more man would make much of a difference. And besides—whatever time he has here? Far more than anyone else would have given him.”

“Yeah, I can feel the charity in your soul,” Corbley said. He was angry with her, though he wouldn’t outright say so. “Tell Miss Webb I said hello.”

Ada let him go, watching Corbley stalk off into town. He had shared his suspicions with her that first night after Finnbar’s arrival, annoyed that she had already made promises to him. “Should’ve told him you’d think it over, shouldn’t have committed to nothin’.” He thought she had acted rashly. Now—well. She didn’t know exactly what he thought now, but it wasn’t favorable.

A breeze picked up, stirring the dust along the road, and Ada looked toward her house. Ester had left the lamp over the steps on, and the lights were still on upstairs. Everything that Carlston was, everything that Carlston had ever been, it was never about the men. It had always been about her and Ester.

Corbley knew that.

The stairs creaked under her feet as she went up to the door, finding the switch for the lantern. The moment it plunged her into darkness felt like relief.

Ester was in their room, pinning fabric on the dress she was sewing. Ada had ordered the fabric for her, blue and white striped print that was soft as water. She looked up as Ada leaned in the door, starting to smile, but she hesitated. “Did something go wrong?”

“Corbley’s angry with me, but other than that, no, it went well.” She leaned her head against the frame. “Do you think I made the wrong decision? About Finnbar.”

“You made the decision you were always going to make.” Ester reached out and grasped her hand. “I know the opportunity you saw. And I know why you did it.”

“That makes one of us, I suppose.” Ada sank to the floor, laying her head against Ester’s thigh. “Why did I do it?”

Ester stroked her hair. “Because you knew he wasn’t going to tell you no. Because you knew that anyone willing to come this far would do whatever you asked. Because you don’t trust any man to be honest with you if he doesn’t owe you his life.”

Ada closed her eyes. “Corbley thinks I’m risking Carlston.”

“Everything you do here is a risk. We knew that when we came here.” Ester squeezed her hand. “Are you having second thoughts?”

“Not exactly.” She looked up at Ester, at the concern on her face. “If it came to sacrificing someone like Finnbar to preserve our place here, would you think poorly of me?”

“We don’t even know Finnbar. He’s nothing to us.”  Ester shrugged. “I know that whatever you do to keep us safe here, you have to do.”

Ada nodded. “You know I’d do anything for you?”

Ester smiled. “Of course.”

#

James was startled awake by the rough, clawed hand shaking his shoulder. Corbley dodged back from the arm he threw out, hissing softly. “Easy,” he said, retreating out of James’ reach. “I just came to wake ya.”

“What the hell are you doing in here?” James asked, reaching under his pillow for a gun he had forgotten he no longer had.

Corbley shrugged and grinned. “Not a door in this town doesn’t unlock for me or Miss Carl. Only reason she didn’t come herself is it’d be improper. Now get up.”

It was still dark outside. “What am I getting up for?”

“Church. Seeing as you’ve just been introduced to the town and the preacher, it’d be noticed if you didn’t attend.” Corbley held up a parcel wrapped in paper and string. “Brought your new suit from the tailor.”

“Does Pastor Richards start his services at dawn?”

“Nah, but I couldn’t be sure how difficult it’d be t’wake ya, and Miss Carl’d have my guts if I let ya be late.” After a moment’s silence, Corbley added, “Best you get dressed and go see her. She’ll be taking you on rounds today, after the service.” He got up and let himself out of the room, and James fell back on the bed, scrubbing over his face with both hands.

Church. He hadn’t been to a service in years. Too many years. He wasn’t even sure he remembered the sort of things you were supposed to do and say.

He dragged himself out of bed to shave by lamplight, not lingering too long on his own reflection. The suit fit well. It was the first time since well before the war that he had clothes he could call his “Sunday best.” He considered the polished buttons, and forced down the urge to tear off the jacket and rip it to pieces. All those years of hardship, of defying the control of landowners and church alike, and now he answered to the beck and call of the very thing he had fought against.

Shame was too cheap a word for what he ought to feel.

The landlady of his boarding house had just started cooking when James came downstairs, and though he politely refused her offer to wait for breakfast, he accepted a cup of coffee. It was real coffee, not the poor replacement made from roasted weed roots. He couldn’t remember the last time he had had real coffee.

Mrs. Barnes glanced up from the eggs she was frying. “Have you ever been married, Mr. Finnbar?”

The question caught him by surprise. “No, ma’am.”

“Pity. Can’t imagine there won’t be girls chasing after you soon enough.” She gave him a teasing smile. “Careful you don’t get yourself in trouble with their fathers.”

He laughed a little, uncomfortable, and took his coffee to the dining room.

At least the sun had come up when he departed, finding his way to the main street and from there to Miss Carl’s house. She was standing out on her porch, mug cradled in one hand as she watched him coming down the street. This suit was newer, and the shirt she wore under it a deep red.

“Good morning, Mr. Finnbar,” she said as he drew closer. “Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough.” He stood on the steps, hand on the rail. “Thank you,” he said, “for the clothes.”

“I’m pleased to see they fit you so well.” She sipped at her drink. “Mr. Hackett has a good sense for the most flattering cut, and he’s done a spectacular job with you.”

James couldn’t quite look her in the eye. “I understand you have some plans for me today?”

“Yes, but we’ll get to that. Have you eaten yet, Mr. Finnbar?” She sat and pushed one of the chairs back from the table with her shoe. “Have a seat.”

He stared at her. “Is this what you had Mr. Corbley wake me up before dawn for?”

“Well, I had to be certain you’d be seen in church.” She smiled over her cup. “Fear not, I won’t ask you to sit with me, or else next week Pastor Richards’ sermon might be about how the devil tempts us to sin.”

“Is Mr. Finnbar here already?” Miss Webb stepped out from the door, dressed in golden yellow. She took the chair next to Carl, leaning into her side. They shared an almost conspiratorial smile, and Carl set down her cup. “After the service, we’ll be going to the brothel for lunch.”

James glanced up. “The brothel.”

“The men get paid every Friday,” Carl said, “which gives them all of Saturday to drink and indulge and run their mouths. You get your news at the town meeting, and you get your gossip at the brothel. Both have their uses.” She grinned, entertained at her own cleverness. “I have lunch with the brothel workers in the garden every Sunday. They’ll need to learn to trust you, before they start telling you everything they tell me.”

James gazed at the pair of them. “I suppose that’s how you know about Jacobsen.”

“And a good many other things.”

The door opened once more, bringing a cook with a tray. She refilled Carl’s cup with what he took to be tea, and laid out three plates. Frontier fare—eggs, fish cakes, bread fried in butter. A pot of hot tea. This, he guessed, was what passed for luxury in Carlston.

Webb spoke as the cook left, her arm on Carl’s shoulder. “I hope you don’t embarrass easily, Mr. Finnbar, or they’ll never let you rest.”

“Thank you, Miss Webb, I think I’ll manage.” He was much more concerned about the church service, about how many eyes might be on him. Half under his breath he muttered, “I’ve always managed better with sinners than church-goers.”

Carl smiled, and said, “Sit in the back corner by the bar. The only person who’ll be able to see you is Pastor Richards.”

James smiled a little, in spite of himself. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“I like to think I have something to offer besides money and resources.” She was watching the street, the town just starting to come to life. To Webb, she asked, “Where did Mr. Corbley get to?”

“He said he was going hunting.” Webb glanced at her. “Said he was tired of eggs and fish.”

“God damn it,” Carl whispered under her breath. “If he’s not back by nightfall we’ll have to go looking for him.” She considered James. “How good are you with a rifle, Mr. Finnbar?”

“I’m a fair shot, Miss.” He shifted, uneasy. “What will I be shooting at?”

“God willing, nothing." 


	3. The Edge of the World

The tavern filled nearly shoulder to shoulder for the service, with Pastor Richards on the stage, Bible in hand. James found himself surrounded by a few miners who mumbled hellos but otherwise didn’t chat, which suited him just fine. Miss Carl and Miss Webb took themselves near the front of the room, stopping to talk, to socialize. James hung back in the corner Carl had told him of, watching the pair of them, close but not overly affectionate, careful and conscious of each other and the people around them.

Carl, he was beginning to understand. It was about what control she could exert, how she could shape this town in her image. Webb was the unknown factor. How much influence she had over Carl, what her own agenda was—that, James had no idea of. 

Battered hymnals were passed around as Pastor Richards began, cracked spines threatening to tear apart at any moment. There was no music to sing to, but that didn’t seem to bother any of the congregants, nor did the fact that the tavern wasn’t designed to hold a singing congregation.

The service was short, at least, and James was surprised at how familiar it all was, how easily the prayers came back to him. They had held a few services in the camps, during the war, but he’d rarely gone to them. He didn’t trust preachers, especially not those that said the things he wanted to hear.

The sermon wasn’t memorable, something about charity and the necessity of caring for the poor, with an angle that seemed designed to flatter Carl for how well she paid her men. James was given to wonder if Richards ever quoted the passage about the ease with which a camel might pass through the eye of a needle.

The tavern emptied slowly after Richards’ sermon was finished, and James watched Carl and Webb move through the room, greeting people by name, with a smile, asking after mothers, brothers, wives, children. Someone’s wife had just had a son, someone’s daughter just recovered from a fever, someone’s husband convalescing with a broken leg. Carl answered to each with the appropriate celebration and concern, and it was fascinating to watch how people responded to her. Some clearly looked for her favor, wanting to ingratiate themselves for their own benefit, but most if not all simply responded to her warmly, as they would an old friend.

James had never even seen the landowning family of his hometown in person. He couldn’t imagine having Mr. Lawrence asking after his father or his sisters, knowing them by name.

Did Carl care to know them, or was this part of how she wielded her control? To keep them content with money, to make them feel she cared for them, at the same time that they all knew what would happen if they stepped out of line. Was that the secret? To make them sure that any man she killed deserved it? After all, only fools would cross the line in a place as good as this, they might think.Who would be so stupid as to bite the hand that fed them so generously?

Carl turned his way at last, tipping her hat. “Thank you for being so patient with me, Mr. Finnbar. I do hope you’re hungry.” She grinned. “You still remember the way to the brothel, I imagine.” Pastor Richards was still in the tavern, and James could see him watching the both of them, his suspicion barely concealed.

He reached for his hat. “I thought you said we needed to maintain propriety in our relationship. Taking you to the brothel seems to work against that.”

She laughed. “I’ll not go inside it, Mr. Finnbar, but you’re certainly welcome to, once we’re finished.”

“Haven’t the money to spend, ma’am.” He rose, following her as he imagined he would do quite often for the foreseeable future. Like a well-trained dog.

The kind that didn’t bite.

“Ah, that reminds me.” She reached into her jacket pocket, and handed him an envelope. “Since you weren’t on payroll yet, I forgot to have someone get these to you on Friday.”

“What is it?”

“Shower tokens. There are no private showers, you’ll have to use the public ones. They’re just round the corner from where we’re going, I’ll point them out. The token gives you six minutes, you get three a week, I recommend you use them wisely.” Carl had her hands in her pockets, and James could tell from the pauses in her speech that she wasn’t really thinking about showers.

“Does Mr. Corbley often disappear like this?”

Carl’s face went stony. “No. But we had a disagreement, and that does usually precipitate an unplanned hunting trip.” She tipped up her chin, face smoothing over in an aloof mask. “Either way, he can take care of himself.”

James pressed a little further. “But you’re worried he won’t make it back.”

“Are you always this inquisitive, Mr. Finnbar?” Carl snapped, any pretense at pleasantness falling away. “You sound like you expect to become my confidant.”

“Apologies,” James said stiffly, “but as I only know three people in this town, being yourself, Mr. Corbley, and my landlady, I thought I would ask if I should be as worried about him as you clearly are.”  

Her hackles went down, if only a little. “I—” She forced out a breath, as if steadying herself. “Those woods are still wild. I trust Corbley to take care of himself, but—well.” Not quite consciously she brought a hand to her ribs. “We’ll look for him on Monday if he hasn’t returned. Until then, you and I have a lunch to attend.” She shook her head and gave a slight shudder, as if shaking off the conversation.

“Corbley likes you,” she said, lightly. “He won’t admit it, but he does.”

That was news to James. “I was under the impression I irritated him.”

“You do. That’s why he likes you.” Carl smirked a little. “Why else do you think he sticks around with the likes of me?” 

#

“Miss Ada!” A woman of about forty with a mane of red hair came running through the flowers, overflowing her dress, to throw her arms around Carl and smack a kiss to her cheek. Catching her, Carl stumbled back into James, who gently shrugged them both off and took a step back. The woman clung to Carl’s shoulders, giving him an inviting smile. “I heard about the new sheriff, but no one told me he was so good-looking.”

“Let the man eat, first, Daisy,” Carl said, freeing herself from the woman’s clutches. “We’ve only just got here.”

“Oh, there’s plenty for him to eat around here,” Daisy laughed, looping her arm through his. “Depending on his tastes.”

“Mr. Finnbar, this is Miss Daisy Shaw, our madam.” Carl straightened the front of her jacket. “Daisy, this is James Finnbar, and you already know what he’ll be doing.”

Daisy grinned. “Oh, I do indeed.”

James smiled and winked at her, and Daisy giggled, squeezing his arm.

She took them to a haphazard row of small tables lined up to make one, covered with yellow checkered tablecloths. There was about twenty or so men and women, probably as clothed as they ever were, groomed and made-up and apparently in good spirits.

He meant only to scan the table, to familiarize himself with their faces, when his eyes caught on one young man in particular, slender and with wide dark eyes and a sly smile—he looked just like Aaron. James hadn’t noticed he hesitated until he felt Daisy tug on his arm.

“Like the gentlemen, do you?” She murmured, with an intimate smile. “This is a discreet house, of course. Feel free to make arrangements with whoever you like—first one’s on the house, for some distinguished as the sheriff.” She winked, and brought him to the seat at Carl’s right hand.

There was plenty of alcohol at the table, and a soup with not entirely identifiable ingredients that smelled alright. The bread was still warm, and from the eagerness with which the brothel workers pursued their food, James suspected that the Sunday meal was made special for Carl’s visit.

“Leona,” Carl said, reaching for the hand of the woman nearest her. “Ester wanted me to ask if you liked that perfume she sent for your birthday.”

“It’s wonderful,” Leona replied, grasping Carl’s hand in both her own. She smiled like the devil. “And Mr. Jacobsen thinks so, too. Couldn’t stop talking about it.”

Carl grinned. “What’s dear Jacobsen been whispering in your ear, love?”

“He thinks your father is an obsessive, that he’s paranoid. He’s bored silly here, especially since he can’t get close enough to you to see anything interesting. He told me about the new man he’d seen with you—Mr. Finnbar, was it?—but he hasn’t been back since town meeting, so I don’t know what he thinks of that yet.” Leona pushed her hair back behind her ear, ignoring James entirely. “He thought maybe you’d imported a husband, just to make sure your father couldn’t get a hold of this place.”

Carl blinked, and laughed. “That’s absurd—and I’m almost peeved I didn’t think of it first.” She looked at James. “What do you think, Finnbar? Should we get married?”

“I’m afraid we’d both be dissatisfied,” James replied, glancing down the table at the man that looked so much like Aaron, just a little softer, a little younger.

“You’re right, of course. Pity, we’d make a handsome pair. Poor Pastor Richards would have a heart attack!” She laughed with Leona and asked after her health, and shortly after that Leona left to move down the table, and her place was taken by another.

Some of them might flirt with James, but they weren’t there to talk to him. They wanted to talk to Carl, to share the juiciest bits of gossip, and air their complaints about the building or their customers. His job, it seemed, was mostly to learn their names and faces.

The young man, he learned, was named Micah. He was one of the last to come to the head of the table, bringing his wine glass with him. His accent suggested he was from the northern parts of the colony, as did the modest cut of his clothes, loose and straight-lined. As he spoke to Carl, James tried to imagine him dressed as Aaron would have dressed, in that carefully arranged dishevelment that was supposed to make him look as though he was casual in excess. Imagined him flying through crowded rooms the way Aaron did, as if waiting for the world to bow before him.

Micah’s eyes settled on him from time to time, with a slight smile, and though she surely noticed, Carl didn’t remark upon it, gently pressing for gossip that James didn’t care enough to remember.

Aaron would have mocked him, to see him like this—but Aaron had left. Aaron had run and Aaron didn’t have a damn thing to say about what James did anymore.

As the meal began to end the men and women began to depart, or to mill around the garden. Micah sat with one of the other men under a shade tree, the pair of them joking over something. Micah kept glancing back at him with a smile.

Carl was looking at him over her wine glass. From the amusement on her face when he noticed her, she had been for a while. “See someone you like, Mr. Finnbar?”

He glanced away, and she laughed. “Oh, now you’re embarrassed. I’m almost relieved, I was beginning to think you were incapable.” She put her chin in her hand. “Didn’t you see him the first time? You arrived here on the same day.”

“I must not have paid close attention.” James reached for his drink, wishing she would stop looking so smug.

Carl chuckled and drained her glass. “I’ve no more need of you today, Mr. Finnbar. I’ll send someone to let you know if Mr. Corbley returns before nightfall.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“You’ll be seeing me in the morning.” Carl stood, retrieving her hat. “Do take your time, Mr. Finnbar. I think Micah’s taken a shine to you. I must admit, you did seem to find the prettiest one.” She smiled, patting him on the shoulder as if they were friends, and went to say her goodbyes.

James had enough pride and spite to think about leaving with her. She had just shown him how integral this place was to her way of maintaining order. He doubted she was above blackmail, as if she needed anything more than the knowledge that he would do her bidding just to stay alive.

He knew he ought to leave.

He knew he wouldn’t.

James finished his drink, and as Carl left, Micah found his way back to the table, smiling. “Mr. Finnbar, was it?”

James looked up at him, at that sure smile and the dark curls that fell around his eyes. “You can call me James.” 

#

Evening came, and Corbley hadn’t returned. James had spent the afternoon on the porch of the boarding house with a borrowed guitar, attempting to tune strings that badly needed to be replaced, and trying to clear his head. He could see some of Carl’s house from there, her porch light on. He would see her pacing as the light faded, binoculars turned on the forest’s edge.

Mrs. Barnes stepped out, asking if he wanted anything to drink.

“No, thank you, ma’am.” He glanced Carl’s way again, and so did Mrs. Barnes.

“Mr. Corbley hasn’t come back yet?”

“Must not have,” James said, “she’s been out there all afternoon.”

“Worries like this every time he disappears,” Mrs. Barnes said. She put her hands on her hips. “The way those two act, you’d think they were married.”  

James wondered if Mrs. Barnes was in the business of absurd ideas or if they just came to her naturally. “What’s in the woods that worries her so much?”

Mrs. Barnes glanced at him, surprised. “You’ve never been on the edge of the colony?”

“Just where it borders Kelchak territory.” James gave up on the guitar, setting it aside. “I grew up near the original settlement, never got very far this way.” The outside edges of the colony, the frontier, it was the end of civilization, of habitable land. The edge of the world.

“You ever heard about the pedes?”

James nodded. The largest land animal on the planet. The first settlers had called them Colossal Centipedes; apparently they bore a remarkable resemblance to a much smaller species on Earth. What he knew about them was that they were big, they were fast, and they were vicious—nothing to be tangled with if one could avoid it. “Is there much trouble with them?”

“Not as much now, with the place as populated as it is, but in the early days…” Mrs. Barnes shook her head. “Men were drug off in the night. Miss Carl—she’s lucky to be alive. Suppose it was about five or six years ago now, I hadn’t come here yet but I heard about it. Big one had come into the camp, everybody was trying to kill it. Way I heard it, Miss Carl was out shooting with them, when the thing caught hold of her, was going to eat her. She got her rifle up under it and shot the thing through the brain, but she was laid up near six months after that, which was around the time I arrived. Mr. Corbley ran the place while Miss Carl was hurt, he knows just as well as she does what they can do.” Mrs. Barnes sighed. “Which is why she’s so upset whenever he goes out hunting pedes.”

James looked up. “That’s what he’s hunting?”

“A big one can feed quite a few people. It’s good meat, if you can get it.” Mrs. Barnes looked toward Carl’s house. “Hate to think what’ll happen to this place if we lose him.”

#

He woke Monday morning to Ada Carl hammering on his door, her suit exchanged for what looked like miner’s clothes, belted at the waste with twine. She had a grim look on her face. “Corbley hasn’t come back. I want you downstairs in ten minutes.”

Half awake, James looked at her clothes. “Do you have a search party?”

“It’ll just be the two of us. I know how to track him, I just need someone to watch my back.”

“Why only two?”

“Do I pay you to ask questions?” She pulled a battered hat down to her ears, looking for all the world like a thirteen year old boy. “Ten minutes, Finnbar.”

When he made it downstairs in the clothes he had brought to Carlston, Carl was sitting in Mrs. Barnes’ parlor, two rifles leaned up against her chair. There was a pistol on her hip, and another on the tea table in front of her. Mrs. Barnes was at the window, seeming decidedly unhappy about all of this. “Miss Carl, I just think if you borrowed some of the men from the mine—”

“The miners will be busy enough managing without their usual foreman, Mrs. Barnes. Please, I need to speak to Mr. Finnbar alone.”

Mrs. Barnes hesitated, and then huffed and swept out to her kitchen.

“I don’t suppose I’ll be able to eat before we go,” James said.

“If you were exaggerating your marksmanship, now’s the time to say so.” She had her arms folded. “There are others I can go to, but—I figure you have a particularly vested interest in keeping me alive.”

James picked up the second pistol. “And I’m the most expendable man in Carlston.”

“Don’t take it personally,” Carl said coolly, “Mr. Corbley is a hundred times more valuable to me than any human man in this colony.” She stood, handing him what looked to be the heavier of the two rifles. “You can shoot faster than a pede can attack, I hope.”

“I suppose we’ll find out.” He looked at her again. “Ma’am, I have to ask again why you, personally, have to go looking for him, and why it’s just the two of us.”

“You don’t, and I don’t have to answer.” Carl slung her rifle over her shoulder, with a weather-worn pack. “I hope you said your prayers yesterday because we’ll need them.”

Mrs. Barnes returned from the kitchen. “Here,” she said, presenting James with a thermos of coffee and a parcel of warm cornbread and sausage. “God be with you, both.”

Carl grimaced and mumbled a quick, “And with you, Mrs. Barnes,” before she walked out the door, letting James hurry to catch up with her. It was barely past dawn, the sky still purple at the edges. The town was quiet, and Carl kept up such a pace that even those who were out didn’t dare to interrupt them. Carl kept her head bent, her eyes forward, tension running through her every movement.

Miss Webb was waiting on the bridge, no pleasant smile on her face. She greeted them apprehensively, fidgeting with the beads on her necklace. She laid her hands on Carl’s shoulders, touching their foreheads together. “Be safe.” They embraced, and Webb’s eyes settled on James, narrow and cold. “If you return and she does not…”

“Ester.” Carl touched her cheek. “I’ll be fine.”

Webb gave her a cold look. “You can’t promise that and you know it.” She let out a breath and kissed Carl’s cheek. “I’ll be praying for you.”

“I love you,” Carl said, returning the kiss. “I’ll be back before night, I promise.” She turned to James, and nodded. “Let’s get moving.”

The air was warm already, promising a sweltering day. James pulled his hat lower, glancing back at Webb, who was watching them from the bridge. “I know you don’t like me asking questions, Miss—”

Carl’s interruption was swift and sharp. “You’re right, I don’t.”

“—but as a matter of being sympathetic, I was curious how it is you and Miss Webb are able to live together without raising suspicion. Or how you can run the brothel as you do.”

Carl glanced back over her shoulder at him. “Sympathy, is it? I suppose that’s one thing you could call it.” She shifted the weight of the pack on her shoulder. “We could call ourselves ‘sympathetics.’ I had heard that Metzger’s army was full of such men, and some women, too. That he promised liberation for them. For us. Freedom from the church and all it’s tyranny.”

James’ stomach twisted, hearing those words again, but with the bitter edge of failure. “There was some truth to that, I suppose. We certainly weren’t… unknown.”

Carl was quiet for a moment. “I bought this land with what was supposed to be my dowry. My father was furious, but it was my money and I was landed, now, he couldn’t do anything about it. I bought it so that Ester and I would have a place that was ours, a place no one could take from us.” She adjusted the rifle, sighing. “Honestly, it was blind luck that it turned out to be rich in ore. I never dreamed Carlston would become what it has.”

“You sound disappointed.”

Carl shook her head. James couldn’t see her face, but her shoulders slumped a little. “Someday, the ‘good and decent church folk’ will outnumber my heretics and sinners and ‘sympathetics.’ The town will vote to build tracks and a station. They’ll vote to let Pastor Richards build his church building. Civilization and the church will come to Carlston, and it will be exactly like the rest of the colony.” She slowed her pace a little bit, falling back to walk beside James. “Between the two of us—there was a part of me that was praying every day that Metzger would win the war.”

James looked down at her. “You sold ore to the church.”

“I’m a queer, Mr. Finnbar, money is the only way to make statesmen turn a blind eye.” She looked up at him. “You’re one of Metzger’s heretics, working for a landowner, enjoying the fruits of my wealth and the protection of my estate. Seems to me you don’t have much room to be judging.”

That twisting in his gut again. James looked away. “How do we find Corbley?”

“He has a cache in the woods, where he squirrels away most of his hunting gear. We’ll start there.” Carl flipped up the brim of her hat. “Maybe you can tell me something, though, seeing as I’ve answered your question.”

“What’s that?”

“If Metzger had won, do you think that ‘The New Covenant’ would have gone back to being the Sapphire Settlement? That we’d be under the governance of Earth again, like it was intended?”

“Why would that happen?” James asked, genuinely surprised. “We’re self-supporting. We don’t need Earth, we never did.”

Carl looked away. “Because Earth has protections for people like us. For heretics and queers and so on. Because the settlement wasn’t always like this. I read my history, I know as well as any of Metzger’s heretics that the only reason the church became what it is was because our government collapsed. Earth-borns stopped coming and this is what we became.”

“The Earth-borns abandoned us, and we became what we did to survive. What right do they have to take back a colony that Covenanters built, that Covenanters are born and die on?”

Carl gave him a sour look, as if he had disappointed her. “But what would Metzger have done? You knew him, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I knew him,” James said, not looking at her. “Metzger was every bit as suspicious of Earth-borns as anyone else. He had a right to be, they never helped us.” There had never been any talk of returning to Earth’s governance. No one had ever considered something so absurd. Did they bleed and die for freedom from tyranny just to submit to governance even further removed from their reality? And for what—right of travel? Membership into a government that hadn’t cared enough to crush the church long before it became what it did?

“As suspicious as any statesman or preacher, you mean.” Carl picked up the pace again. “Enough talking. We have to find Corbley.”

There was no path through that forest. The trees between Carlston and Mallory were spaced, mostly young, clearly having been logged in the recent past, but this forest was still hip-deep with undergrowth, the trees old and densely packed. Carl was following a route that seemed random at first, until James finally noticed the marks etched into the bark of the tree, at about where Corbley’s line of sight would be. A cross with an extra set of horizontal branches.

Carl would stop every so often, just listening. James felt as if he ought to be listening, too, but he didn’t know for what, and he had the feeling that if he spoke to Carl first, she’d break his nose with the rifle stock.

Corbley’s cache was in a hollow under the roots of a tree twisted and gnarled with age. Carl rifled through what was there, and took a look around. She dropped her pack in the hollow and shoved the toe of her boot into the wedge of a low branch, climbing up the tree. She paused a few feet up to look down. “Shoot at anything that looks bigger than you, alright?”

He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” James wished the underbrush were even a little lower, the trees a little easier to see through. The light was dim, blueish—the air smelled of dry rot. Not the sort of place humans should be.

Carl same sliding down the tree, papery layers of bark curling away from under her boots. “He went southwest. Probably had to camp overnight in the trees.” There was a quiet refusal to acknowledge any other possibility in her voice.

“How can you tell?” As far as James could see it was just undergrowth, everything looked the same.

“You’ll see.” Carl brought her rifle to the ready. “I’d be prepared, if I were you.”

James felt the weight of the rifle in his hands, almost feeling as though he were fighting again, waiting for Bishop’s Men to ambush them. “Can I trouble you with another question?”

Carl sounded ready to spit acid. “When I die the devil is going to chain us together in hell to punish me for every sin I’ve ever committed.”

It wasn’t an outright no. “How big do the pedes get, generally?”

Carl gave him a poisonous look. “They stop growing at around forty-eight feet long, or so I’ve been told. The one that nearly killed me we measured at just shy of thirty-five.”

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. “You seem to have done alright,” Jame said.

Carl gave him a dry smile, knowing exactly what he was fishing for. “I have a false lung on the right side, because the surgeon couldn’t save the real one.” Carl held up a hand to silence any further questions, and then pointed through the brush.

A deep swath had been cut—or crushed—in the undergrowth, the broken stems of the weeds dark with hardened resin. It was nearly four feet across, scraping down to the soil in some places. “Ah,” Carl said, hardly above a whisper. “Not a very big one, then.”

Some escape this would be, if he died in Carlston not even a week after he arrived.

Carl stepped down into the hollow, rifle in the crook of her elbow as she followed the bend of the weeds. She looked back at him, hanging back. “Now would be a very bad time to decide you’re a coward, Mr. Finnbar.”

He was not about to be needled by such a low jibe. “If you have a plan, Miss Carl, I’d rather you share it now, before our lives are in danger.”

She pointed at the ground. “Do you see how the resin has dried? It’s been a few hours since the pede was through here. When they’re not on the attack they don’t tend to move very fast, so we stand a decent chance at catching up with it. Wherever Corbley is, this is the pede he’s most likely tracking, since it was the only fresh trail I could see from his cache. The plan is that we find the pede, kill it, and we find him. Is that clear enough for you?”

“And when it comes right at us?” Every story he had ever heard about pedes was about their aggression, their ferocity. Some called them the devil’s own make.

Carl was soundly unimpressed. “Then you use that opportunity to shoot it right in its ugly face. Failing that, we’ll both be running.” She gazed at him. “Mr. Finnbar, if you are overly concerned about safety then you shouldn’t have come to the frontier.”

“I came here hoping not to be killed. I thought, when you introduced me to the town, that you wanted me to be useful.” This plan—this was a death wish wrapped in a rescue mission.

“If I wanted to get rid of you, I’d have handed you over to the church. I’m sure that would make them willing to ignore what goes on in Carlston for a few more years. You’re here because I need a man I know won’t be tempted to let a pede kill me because he has a grudge against me. You need me, Finnbar, and you know it.”

She sighed, frustrated. “They’re basically armor plated. It’s not impossible to get a bullet through it but you really want to bring them down fast you go for the eyes, or if they’re about to kill you, right through the mouth. Those are the softest parts of them that are closest to their vitals. If you’re really lucky, you catch them right after molt, while they’re still soft—but this late in the dry season I wouldn’t count on it. They tend to molt in the spring.”

He stared back at her, and he watched her shoulders slump, almost imperceptibly. “If I lose Corbley this whole place falls apart,” she said. “Then neither of us have anything. Please, I need your help.”

James let go of a breath, and nodded. “Let’s go, then.”

The trail moved in twists and turns through the wider gaps between the trees, and once they found blood smeared across the ground. James was the one who found the discarded forelegs of something black-furred and mammal-like, and Carl seemed to breathe a little easier after that. “It must not be terribly hungry—they usually eat everything, even the bones.” James decided he didn’t want to ask her how she knew that.

They walked and the light shifted through the trees as the day dragged on. Even the bugs were sluggish in the heat, and James’ shirt stuck to his back with sweat. Carl had brought water and hardtack, which wasn’t so much a meal as a lightweight method of dulling hunger while they crouched by the stream that the pede had crossed. If Carl felt any fatigue, her determination to find Corbley overpowered it, and they set off again.

He had used to make his men march like this, to make them accustomed to it. They had to be prepared to outlast the Bishop’s Men, he told them. To make up for their lack of experience with endurance, determination. He didn’t know what had become of them, if they had been captured or killed, who might be languishing in a cell somewhere, or if like him, they were doing something incredibly stupid in hopes of avoiding judgment just a little longer.

It was near afternoon when Carl held up her hand to stop him, pointing wordlessly at the ground. Sticky resin glimmered on the broken stems, and there was a boot print in the dirt. Carl brought a finger to her lips, though they hadn’t spoken in over an hour.

James was attentive to every sound, the rustle of the leaves in the breeze, the creaking of branches, and the quiet crunch of the weeds under their boots. Carl was half a step ahead of him, scanning the trees.

They heard it, first.

Lumbering and heavy, dozens upon dozens of legs moving through the underbrush, bigger than anything ought to have been. Carl stepped back into the undergrowth to crouch down, and James did the same.

He only saw it as it raised up, stretching up the trunk of a tree, mandibles clicking, body bending as it pulled itself up. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered. Carl was whispering the Lord’s Prayer under her breath, which didn’t reassure him much. The pede was a dark, ruddy brown, and each of its legs were longer than one of James’ arms. They dug into the side of the tree easily, hauling that massive bulk higher as it investigated something in the branches.

A rifle shot cracked through the air and the pede gave an ear-splitting shriek and recoiled, falling back from the tree with a crash. It righted itself with an unnatural speed, now enraged, and lunged at the tree, wood groaning and cracking under the shuddering weight of that thing.

Carl stood, bringing her rifle to her shoulder, and firing.

The pede’s head snapped around, and seeing Ada, abandoned the tree, and came barreling toward them like a freight train, legs moving like a ripple down its body.

Carl took a second shot, and then turned to run back down the pede’s trail, shouting back—”Stay hidden! Shoot it as it passes!” She was faster than he would have thought, leaping over stray tree roots that might have tripped her.

Another shot came from behind the pede, but the beast kept going for Carl, the huge body sliding past where James crouched, making the forest shake around him. He leveled the rifle, trying to find the pede’s head. He fired, and must have hit something, because the pede whipped back, screaming again.

It turned, seeking him out, making a rattling sound that James was sure didn’t mean anything good.

Cold with sweat he sighted the eyes, huge and glossy black, as the monster bore down on him. He squeezed the trigger, the rifle kicked back against his shoulder, and the pede’s right eye burst, spraying blood and fluid far enough to hit him across the front as the thing shrieked and writhed—but it still had the momentum to come for him.

James ran, cutting through the underbrush even though it slowed him down, and looking back over his shoulder he saw Carl running up the thing’s back, crouched low enough to grab onto the seams in its exoskeleton for balance. He had to look away to duck through the trees, just doing his best to out-pace the pede, and when he looked back again, Carl was on the thing’s head, with a knife pulled out of her belt, and she drove it down through the pede’s destroyed eye, with enough force that her hand disappeared into the cavity, past the wrist.

The pede’s entire body twisted, bucking violently and throwing Carl somewhere into the brush. James slid into a hollow behind a fallen log, watching the beast as it died.

The pede’s death spasms flung its body against the trees, snapping the trunks and bringing them down. James hit the ground, covering his head with both arms and praying.

He heard another two shots, in quick succession, and then a heavy thud.

After a few moments, he heard—”Finnbar, are you still alive?”

“I could ask the same of you.” His hands found a branch and he pulled himself up through the broken trees, surfacing at last to see Carl on the other side of the pede, her hat missing, and a scratch on her cheek bleeding down her neck into her shirt. The pede’s legs still twitched, but it was largely on its side, and a thick pool of blood was forming around its head.

“Still in one piece?” Carl asked.

“Nothing’s broken, I think.” He was still too full of adrenaline to be certain he wasn’t hurt, but he could stand, and started to pull himself out of the trees. He checked himself over, startled at first by the black blood on his shirt until he remembered. Carl had it worse, and as he drew closer to her he could see that her entire hand was blackened with it. The knife was missing.

Corbley’s voice came from up the trail. “What in the name’a hell are you two idiots doing out here?”

Carl dropped her rifle and ran to Corbley, punching him in the shoulder with her bloody hand and then throwing her arms around him. “Don’t you ever do that to me again, you scale-faced shit-sucker!”

Corbley patted her on the back, looking almost contrite. “Alright, alright. There’s no need to go bruisin’ me.”  He looked up at James. “Had to go and bring Finnbar, did ya?”

James went to them, if only to keep his distance from the pede. “I would have come anyway,” he said. “I’m glad to see that you’re alright.”

Corbley grimaced. “That bein’ a relative term.”

Carl pushed back, holding Corbley at arm’s length. He sighed and pulled back his coat, revealing his shirt, torn and bloody. “Bastard got a hold of me yesterday, but I escaped. Followed the scent of blood after that, I imagine. I ain’t dying,” he said, seeing Carl’s face. “Least, not yet.”

James looked back at the pede, which had finally gone still. It was maybe twenty five feet long, and he thought of Carl, incapacitated for half a year by one just ten feet longer. “Is your knife still in that thing’s head?”

“In its brain, if I got deep enough,” Carl said, looking at her hand. “Once you get into the soft mushy bits they all feel the same.”

James felt a little nauseated. “How do we get this thing back to Carlston?” He at least wanted the satisfaction of eating the thing that had tried to kill him.

Corbley steadied himself and handed a flare gun to Carl. She dug in her pockets for flares. “Blue for a successful kill,” she told him, firing the first into the air. A streak of blue smoke chased up through the treetops. “And red,” she said, loading the second, “if somebody got hurt. Ester’ll be watching, she’ll send a retrieval party.” She wobbled on her feet a little, steadying herself with a hand on the nearest tree. “Do me a favor, Finnbar,” she said, “don’t tell Ester I got that close to its head. She’d kill me herself.”

“You’ll have to wash your damn hands then, won’t ya?” Corbley asked.

Carl laughed. “Had to get at it’s fucking brain, didn’t I?”

“I thought that’s what I was doing,” James said.

“Valiant effort,” Carl said, grinning. “You did make my job easier. Less goop to get through. Next time, try to shoot it through the same eye a second time.”

James glanced back at the pede. “God willing, there won’t be a next time.”

“And while you’re dreaming, Finnbar, dream up a reality in which mines never collapse and my father loses interest in what I do.” Carl wiped her hand on the weeds, trying to clean her palm.

Corbley tensed, of a sudden, thin blue tongue flicking between his teeth. He growled from somewhere deep in his throat.

Carl pulled herself up to her feet. “What is it?”

Corbley bared his teeth to hiss, but before he could speak James felt a gun barrel pressed against the back of his head. “I wouldn’t move, if I were you,” a cool voice murmured.


	4. Three Kings

Over the years, James supposed, he had become something of an expert at having a gun held to his head. He could guess the size of the weapon (in this case, something that would surely obliterate the back of his skull) and from the angle, whether the person was taller or shorter than him. (Not many were taller than him, but whoever currently held the gun at his head clearly was.)

James had talked his way out of this situation plenty of times before, but that had been with people he knew, people he expected this from. He didn’t know, now, who it was that was ready to send him to his final judgment, or why. 

Corbley, though, seemed to know exactly who it was, snapping out a stream in some Kelchak dialect James didn’t recognize. They spoke half a dozen languages in the Kelchak colony, James only knew a little in two. Enough to trade for weapons and supplies, that was all.

Enough to say hello.

“My name is Finnbar,” he said, thinking anything was worth a shot. “I am not your enemy.”

The faltering was subtle, but he felt it. “You speak some of our language,” the voice said, surprised.

“Only a little,” James replied, turning his head (slow, so as not to startle). A Kelchak face stared shrewdly down at him. Seven feet tall, he’d guess—which meant she was female. Alilaq was the word they used—it denoted something different than woman. “I mean it, I’m not your enemy.”

“That is not for you to decide, but I appreciate the gesture.” The Kelchak grimaced in something meant to be a smile. “Your kind answer to the males, do they not?”

“Oh, for the love of Christ,” Carl snapped.

“I answer to her,” James told the Kelchak, not in a hurry to have Carl shoot him either.

“Lirimahk,” Corbley said, “leave him be.”

The Kelchak’s eyes flicked to Corbley. “You do not tell me what to do, Kalumahk.”

Oh. Oh.

“Corbley,” Carl said, “why does she know your name?”

“Because they’re nestmates,” James said. “Brother and sister.” Every Kelchak in a brood had the same suffix to their name.

“Impressive,” Lirimahk said, and James felt the gun barrel shift, but she didn’t remove it. “You answer to the woman?”

“Ada Carl,” Carl growled, “and it’s my land you’re trespassing on.”

“Humans clear their land. This is still wooded.”

“It’s frontier, didn’t see a point to ruining good hunting ground before I need to.” Carl was holding herself up against the tree, apparently more badly hurt than she had first seemed. She was keeping her weight off her left leg. “Let Finnbar go and I’ll forgive you the trespass.”

“He is valuable to you,” Lirimahk said, “I am disinclined to release him until I have assurances.”

Carl’s cheeks flamed red with anger. “Ma’am,” James said, quietly, “it’s alright.”

“It absolutely is not,” Carl spat. “I’ll not be threatened, or have any of my men threatened, on my own damned land!” She pushed herself away from the tree, sucking in a pained breath as she limped forward. “You’ll let my man go,” she snarled through her teeth, “or I will raise the Devil himself to drive you out of here.”

“Jesus Christ,” James whispered, closing his eyes.

“I don’t answer to your Devil,” Lirimahk said. “I wish to negotiate.”

“Then I’ll tell you now that I won’t negotiate anything until you let—him—go.” Carl was wobbling on her feet, her face starting to go grey from pain. It made the blood drying on her face seem even darker. “My people are coming and they will shoot you.”

James felt the barrel lift from his head and he took two swift steps forward, holding Carl up by the arm on her right side. She sagged, letting out a breath and a quiet litany of curses. He looked up at Lirimahk, getting his first clear look at her.

She wore Kelchak clothes, light and loose, more decorative than anything else. A broad crest of spines fanned out from her head, yellower than the rest of her red scales, and they rattled slightly as she turned her head, studying them. “I had heard you came to live with humans, Kalumahk, but the reality of it is… disappointing.” There were four others, three males and another female. It seemed that they all answered to Lirimahk.

Corbley spit on the ground. “You got no right comin’ here.”

“You’ve adopted some of their more disgusting habits, I see.” Lirimahk gave a short bark sound. “And your speech…”

“It’s none of your god-damned concern,” Corbley replied.

“Shut up,” Carl said, “both of you.” She tried to levy herself up again, fingers digging into James’ arm. “We’re not negotiating a damned thing until I and my people have seen a doctor. You can follow us back to Carlston, but you’re not guests until I say so.”

After a moment, Lirimahk inclined her head. “Very well.”

James turned his head to murmur to Carl. “You’re hurt.”

“Fracture, I think, in my leg. Damned pede.” Her grip on his arm was sure to leave a bruise. “I should—sit, probably. My gun—”

“I’ll find it,” James told her, easing her down to the ground. “How soon do you think your retrieval party will get here?”

“They’ll be moving fast, if I know Ester. Hour, most.” Carl leaned back against the tree, exhaustion on her face. “The rifle’s—over there, I think.”

James nodded and glanced at the Kelchak, who were watching him with interest. Corbley was arguing with Lirimahk in whatever language they shared, and they continued to argue after James found Carl’s rifle and returned to her side. He crouched next to her. “I’m no doctor, but I can manage a splint, if you need it.”

Carl hesitated, but she nodded. She watched as James cut down one of the lower branches of the tree, cutting it down to the right size. “What did I do to earn this sudden kind streak?”

He glanced at her. “I suppose I have a particularly vested interest in keeping you alive.”

She smiled. “It’s just a broken leg.”

“I won’t earn myself any favors with Miss Webb by not doing anything.” He cut down a second branch, glad he at least had something to keep him busy.

“Well, there is that, I suppose.” Carl closed her eyes. “Hell of a day we’ve had, isn’t it, Finnbar?”

“I haven’t been bored since I came here.” He glanced back at the Kelchak. “You think they came all this way for Corbley?”

“I don’t know. I don’t give a fuck, honestly, except that they’re trespassing and threatening my citizenry.” She looked at him, preparing to splint her leg. “I’m beginning to wonder if there’s anything you can’t do, Mr. Finnbar.”

James knelt next to her, cutting fabric from the hem of his coat. “Well I’m shit at dancing,” he said, which made her laugh. “Can’t say I’m much of a cook, either.”

“Maybe Micah can teach you to dance,” Carl said, “I understand he’s quite fond of it.” She grimaced. “Pity you ruined your coat.”

“It’s old, I’ve been needing a new one for a while.” He had worn that coat through most of the war. Perhaps it was time to retire it, along with everything else. “Probably does more good tied around your leg, anyhow.”

“God, Finnbar, you’re almost nice when you don’t hate me.”

Corbley and Lirimahk’s argument had reached a new volume, the pair of them barking and growling at each other, Corbley apparently not intimidated by how Lirimahk towered over him.

“You’ve dealt with the Kelchak before?” Carl asked.

“We traded with them, in the war. Had to pick up a few things.” James turned back to the task of binding the splint. “I’m hardly an expert.”

“You’d know more than me,” Carl said, “Corbley’s the only Kelchak I’ve ever known. Met him on the train, the first time I came to see my land.” She grinned at the memory. “Some men were giving me and Ester a hard time. Corbley came flying out of the seat, spitting and hissing like the Devil’s own serpent—scared one of them so bad he pissed himself. Said if I’d pay for his next ticket, he’d stay with me wherever I was going.”

“And you gave him a new name.”

“Everybody in Carlston is running from something, Finnbar. Even Pastor Richards.” She winced a little as he set the splint, but never cried out.

James sat, putting his arms over his knees. “Oh? What did Richards do?”

“Wouldn’t you like to find out.” Carl shifted to better support her back. “I’m not sure he even realizes that I know. I’d have to know your real name before I entrusted you with information like that.”

Corbley and Lirimahk finally fell into a contentious silence, leaving the other Kelchak to mutter among themselves. James sat near Carl, keeping an eye on the Kelchak, not liking that they were outnumbered.

“Can I ask you a favor, Finnbar?” Carl asked, fingertips on her cheek.

He glanced at her. “What sort of favor?”  

“Help me get this blood off my face… Ester will probably have come along and if she sees me like this…” Carl was fumbling for her kerchief, her other hand going for the pack with their water. “I just don’t want to open up the wound again, doing it blind.”

James took the pack from her, finding the canteen. Carl held out her kerchief, grimacing. “I’d ask Corbley, but he’s clumsy enough he’d scratch me worse than before.”

“Only ‘cause you fidget like a toddler in church,” Corbley said, coming over so as to better ignore Lirimahk. “Ain’t my fault your hide is so fragile.”

James carefully wiped the blood from her cheek. “I’d hesitate to wonder what Richards’ next sermon would be about if he saw this.”

Carl laughed a little. “And if your right hand causes you to fall into sin, cut it off and throw it away.”

James smiled. “Someone should tell him to take the log out of his own eye before he reaches for the splinter in his brother’s.”

“What I wouldn’t give to watch someone quote scripture back at him,” Carl said, turning her face to the side as he cleaned the blood from her cheek. “He’s so prideful about it, you’d think no one else in the colony reads their bible.”

“Most don’t, or can’t, as far as I can tell.” James wet the kerchief again, trying to wring out some of the blood.

“Oh, don’t bother,” Carl told him, “I must have a thousand.” She turned her cheek. “Am I presentable?”

“As much as you can be, present circumstances considered.” James handed the kerchief back. “I hope Miss Webb doesn’t intend to repay me for your injuries.”

The retrieval party arrived in trucks, and Webb leapt down from the first of them, picking up her skirts to run to Carl. “Ada!”

“I’m fine, it’s Corbley that needs looking after.” James helped Carl to her feet, walking her to the truck while the men in the retrieval party dealt with the pede, sawing it into smaller sections that could be loaded into the trucks. The bitter smell of blood filled the air.

“Kalumahk needs a Kelchak doctor,” Lirimahk called.

“If you’ve got one of those, you can get back in my good graces by offering their services,” Carl spit back.

Webb hovered close by until Carl was securely within the truck, leg propped up across the back seat. “Thank you, Mr. Finnbar.”

He nodded, and glanced at Carl. “If you’ve no more need of me, ma’am, I thought I’d go help with the pede.”

“Do that,” Carl said, twisting to look out the window at the work. “We’ll all be eating well, tonight. Ester, can you call ahead and tell Mrs. Li to get the processing kitchen ready?”

“Already did that before we left,” Webb said. She looked at James. “You splinted her leg?”

He nodded.

Webb took one of his hands, squeezed it. “Thank you.” 

#

Doctor Boulos insisted on giving James a once-over, and when James insisted he was fine, Boulos informed him that it was at Miss Carl’s order, and he was welcome to argue with her if he wanted to, but otherwise the doctor intended to do his due diligence.

Boulos’ house, and the building out of which he practiced, wasn’t far from the processing kitchen—a huge building which James had learned was usually used for preserving crops at the end of the season. When he left it, the long counters down the middle were slick with pede blood, and the air around the place was choked with the smell of cooking meat. He had watched them scraping flesh and organs from the cracked open exoskeleton,  separating out lungs from hearts from half a dozen other things he couldn’t have identified with a guide, smashing open legs to get at the pale muscle underneath. It was all a little disgusting, particularly when he learned from a very pleased older woman that the intact eye would be punctured and drained for some cooking purpose that he didn’t stick around to hear about.

The exoskeleton itself, he learned from some of the men cutting it apart, would be burned, and the ash tilled into the portion of fields currently laying fallow. They claimed that pede shells made for bigger crops, with better flavor.

The doctor seemed pleased to find that he hadn’t broken, sprained, or twisted anything, and cleaned what few minor abrasions he did have. “Surprising that you’re in such good condition,” Boulos commented, “considering Miss Carl says it was you that killed the pede.”

“She said—what?”

“Oh, Finnbar!” Carl limped into the room from the door behind him, a crutch under her arm. Her leg was in a better splint, now, though from the expression on Boulos’ face James doubted she was supposed to be moving around on it so much. “I was just telling Doctor Boulos that—” She stopped, her eyes falling on his bare shoulder, on the mark Boulos had been too polite to remark on. He snatched his shirt up as her eyes went wide, pulling it on.

“Doctor, please leave us for a moment,” Carl said, steadying herself with a hand on the door frame.

Boulos nodded and left the room, mentioning something about how he would be at his desk if anyone needed him. James stood to turn away from Carl, buttoning his shirt.

Carl’s voice was soft, horrified. “They branded you?”

He had lived with that mark for over half his life, now, that _H_ burned into his skin. “I had a choice,” he said, “to renounce my sins and be re-baptized, or to take the brand.” He lifted his chin. “Long before the war, of course. They’d kill me for that kind of heresy, now.”

“What the hell did you do?” Carl asked, “The branding, I thought that was—I thought the heretics made that up, or it was—hyperbole, or something.”

“If I told you what I did to earn that brand, what would you do with that?” He looked at her. “Store it with all the other secrets you use to keep your citizens in line?”

Carl seemed ready to protest, but she hesitated, and went quiet. “When did they—do that?”

“I was nineteen. They held me down.” Certain smells would remind him of it, sometimes—the sharp smell of a terror-sweat, burning meat.

“God Almighty,” Carl whispered. She looked at him like she was only just seeing him. “Finnbar—”

“I don’t need your pity.” The defense was reflexive, harsher than he meant it to be.

Carl recoiled from it, and as she recovered, her face hardened.“Right. Or my sympathy or compassion, I’m sure.” She started to turn in the door, fumbling with her crutch. “Anyway, I was just telling the good doctor how you killed the pede. Quite heroic, really, I’m sure the town will be talking about it for days.” She gave him a cold look over her shoulder. “You should get some clean clothes. We’ll be having dinner with our Kelchak intruder.” 

#

If Ester knew one thing about Ada, it was how to spot when her pride had been wounded. She sulked over it like a child, her temper gone sour as curdled milk. She was sulking now, sitting on the porch intermittently hitting the rail with the end of her crutch because she believed that hitting something would make her feel better.  

Ester had brought out a pitcher of cider, pouring glasses for the both of them. “So what did Mr. Finnbar say that put you in such a mood?”

Ada was scowling at her leg, propped up on a chair with a bag of ice draped over the shin. “How’d you know it was Finnbar?”

Ester sat with her glass, giving Ada a sideways look. “He’s your newest puzzle to figure out, and you like him more than you want to admit, so I’d figure he’s the only person who could have said something that would make you react with this much piss and vinegar.”

“He’s an idiot,” Ada said, vehement in a way she only was with people who had offended her pride.

Ester pushed the second glass toward Ada. “Have a drink, tell me what happened.”

“He’s too good for my sympathy, apparently.” Ada whacked the rail with her crutch again. “And just when I thought we might be getting along.”

“He resents you because he’s dependent on you,” Ester said. “He’s been surprisingly well-behaved, all things considered.” She had her cards, their edges soft and worn. She ran her finger across the top of the deck, feeling them bend under her touch. “He didn’t kill that pede, did he?”

“Doesn’t matter, the whole town will think he did.”

“Ada.”

“It will make them warm to him a little faster,” Ada said. “They’ll be curious about him. Impressed by him. They’ll come to trust him.” She held the glass of cider up to the sunlight, found it to be acceptable, and took a swallow. “Then I won’t have to spend so much time running around this place myself. I can spend more time with you.” She reached across the table, grasping Ester’s hand. Ada rubbed her hand with a thumb for a moment, and then she sighed, shifting and putting her glass down. “He was branded, Ester. Actually—branded.”

Ester blinked. “What?”

“A big H on his shoulder. I saw it in Doctor Boulos’ office.” Ada was staring at the woodgrain of the table. “Said he was nineteen when the church did it. Told me he didn’t need my pity.”

Ester squeezed her hand. “You know it isn’t about you.”

“I know.” Ada looked up. “Will you read for me?”

Ester nodded, picking up her cards again. “Any particular direction?”

“Too many.” Ada pressed her glass to her cheek. She had always hated the heat. “I feel like I’ve been thrown into the brambles.”

Ada watched her intently as she shuffled and laid out the cards. It was a trick Ester had picked up when they were both young and had met through their shared tutor. It was only meant to be a party game, to make people notice her, but she had shown a talent for it, and the old woman who had taught her was impressed with how quickly she took to the cards. “You’ve got the intuition for it, you could make a pretty penny off reading.”

Readers drew the eye of the church, though, and Ester had never wanted to put on the sort of show that readers did, convincing their clients of the presence of spirits, angels, and devils. The cards were tools, that was all. A way of making sense of things.

“You know, with as much time as you spend watching me do this, you could probably read them yourself,” Ester told her.

Ada shook her head. “I can’t do it like you can.” She looked at Ester, and got that stupid smile on her face she had sometimes, when she was thinking about the past. “You remember the first time I asked you to read for me, and you said that I was a rash fool who caused most of my own problems?”

“I was right,” Ester said. “Just like I was right about Corbley being a loyal friend.”

“And Finnbar?”

“That remains to be seen.” She had done a few readings about him since he arrived, and every one had had its own puzzling cards. Contention followed him everywhere, but so did cards suggesting friendship, loyalty—whatever Finnbar was to become to this place, it wouldn’t be done easily.

Ester turned over the cards, and hesitated. Ada noticed. “What? What is it?”

“It’s—” Ester put a finger to her lips, thinking. “You see the King of Diamonds, there at the top? Usually when I see this card it denotes you, and this here, the King of Spades, that’s your father. But this one—” She tapped her fingers against the King of Clubs, which lay just to the other side of the King of Diamonds. “—that’s the first time I’ve seen you flanked by two kings.” She considered the cards she had laid down, a line of seven, with the King of Diamonds square in the center.

“What kind of person would the King of Clubs be?”

“A leader,” Ester said, “someone thoughtful and maybe stubborn, someone who can make people hear him. But,” she frowned, pressing fingers to the Nine of Clubs, the Four of Hearts. “this one—our King of Clubs has lost his sense of purpose. Some consequence of his actions has led him to feel powerless, lost.”

“That could be nine out of every ten men who end up here. You think those cards speak to his situation and not one he’ll create for me?”

“Gut feeling,” Ester said, “I think they’re about him.” She considered the other side, the cards accompanying the King of Spades. The Three of Spades and the Two of Clubs. “Your father or someone like him is bringing trouble, and either he will make some kind of alliance to accomplish it, or you must make one to combat it.”

“Or both,” Ada said, giving a wry smile. “With him, it’s usually both. Maybe I’ll have to make friends with our King of Clubs, give him a purpose again.” She took a swallow of cider, and let out a breath. “Do you ever think we made the wrong choice, coming here instead of joining the heretics?”

“I used to,” Ester said, “but lately, not so much.” She collected her cards, glancing at Ada. “Is this about Metzger?”

“The war isn’t over until the church knows for sure that John Metzger is dead, and they won’t be satisfied until someone delivers his corpse to them.” She was watching the street. “Ester?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you for standing by me.” She held her glass in both hands, shoulders slumped. “Staying with me. Believing in me.”

Ester reached out and tucked a stray hair behind Ada’s ear. “You’ve done all that and more for me, love.” She pulled one of Ada’s hands to her, lacing their fingers together. “If it weren’t for you,” she murmured, “I’d still be wearing suits, and saying hello to your parents in church. I’d be Doctor Webb, by now, and miserable about it.”

Ada’s fingers tightened in hers. “I’d burn down heaven and hell and everything in between just to see you safe and happy, you know that?”

“Stop being dramatic,” Ester said, watching the wind stir the dust. “We’re safe, and I’m happy.”

#

Ada had to admit, at least to herself, that she felt some sharp satisfaction at the way Finnbar avoided her gaze when next she saw him. He was aware that he had offended her, and he had sense enough to know that she was not likely to forget that.

Cleaned up as he was, Ada would have been hard-pressed to guess that he had left the town at all that day if she hadn’t been with him. Joining the group in the dining room, he looked as though he would rather be any other place in the world. (More so than usual—Ada hadn’t seen him comfortable since he arrived.)

“Ya can stop staring like y’want him to drop dead,” Corbley muttered under his breath.

Ada glanced at him. “I could say the same for you. You’ve been sulking like a child.” She was moving too fast through her drink, and pushed it away. “You didn’t tell me you had a sister.”

“Got more’n I can count. You know it doesn’t work like with your kind. It’s only your nestmates and your mother and sire that matter.” Corbley was fidgeting, scraping his claws over the tabletop.

Ada tapped him with her good foot. “Stop, before Ester sees you doing that. You’ll ruin the finish.”

Corbley growled softly and curled his claws into his palm. “Ya had to go and invite her to dinner.”

Lirimahk made the normally generous dining room feel suffocatingly small. She stood near a full foot taller than even Finnbar, discounting the spines on her head, which she had to lower to keep from scraping the ceiling when she stood. “It was kind of you, Miss Carl, to pay for my party to eat in the tavern.” She sat carefully at the end of the table, negotiating the narrow frame of the chair. Finnbar sat just down from Ester, leaving a noticeable gap between Lirimahk and Corbley.

“I hope I didn’t seem too harsh in our first encounter,” Ada replied, “I was… in what one might charitably call an unpleasant mood, and disinclined to be forgiving of misunderstandings.”

Lirimahk chirruped slightly in the back of her throat, which Ada took to be akin to a chuckle. “Of course, Miss Carl, I should be apologizing for my own behavior. Our past encounters with humanfolk have led us to take certain extreme precautions.”

“Such as hostages,” Ada said lightly. Ester gave her a sharp glance.

“Such as hostages,” Lirimahk agreed. “My apologies for any disrespect—it has been my understanding that humans answer to the most senior male, which I presumed Mr. Finnbar to be.”

“Humans answer to landowners and the church,” Ada said. “Mr. Finnbar works for me as my law enforcer. But we’re dancing around the question, which is why you are here, Miss Lirimahk.”

The cook, Mrs. Hammond, stepped into the room with dishes of steaming hot meat pies, moving silently around the table as Lirimahk bared her teeth. “I came to see my nestmate, of course.”

Corbley growled.

“Right,” Ada said, “which is why you came around on the unpopulated side instead of through Mallory.”

“Your people do not seem to generally care for mine,” Lirimahk replied. “They meet us with violence, as often as not. Worse, sometimes they meet us with priests.” She negotiated the silverware inexpertly, but didn’t seem at all flustered by her lack of familiarity. She glanced at Finnbar and adjusted her hold on the fork. “Might I inquire as to what is in this?”

“Vegetables grown in our fields,” Ada said, “the crust is made from cornflour, also a Carlston product, and the meat is from the pede that we killed this morning. The broth in which it was all cooked was largely made from the fluid within the pede’s eye.”

Finnbar nearly dropped his fork, and seemed to have to take a moment to steel himself against that thought, staring at an indeterminate point on the wall.

“I’m told it’s quite nutrient rich,” Ada said, “I wouldn’t know exactly why, but I know it makes an incredible soup.” Finnbar didn’t look comforted by this news.

“It’s delicious,” Lirimahk replied. “You must give my compliment to your cook.”

There was some meaningless discussion of agricultural management, Lirimahk claimed to be interested in their soil treatment, in how they managed the long dry months. Ester occasionally asked questions about the Kelchak, about the differences between their genders (there were six, which factored into a Kelchak’s age and reproductive status and a number of other things that were difficult for Ada to keep track of) and how a Kelchak shifted between them. One might be born male, but not remain that way.

Corbley finally lost his patience. “The hell are you here for, Lirimahk?”

“You know why.” Lirimahk’s spines rattled softly as she turned her head. “Your wife wishes to know what became of you.”

Ada had made the mistake of trying to take a sip of whiskey at that moment, and promptly choked on it. “You have a wife?”

Lirimahk smiled. “I thought this one was your friend. You didn’t tell her?”

“Weren’t a reason for her to know,” Corbley said. “Anapar has five others to look after her nests, she don’t need me.”

“She has a right to know where you are.” Lirimahk growled. “Especially after how you left.”

“What for? To send me home in disgrace? I ain’t going nowhere. My place is here.”

Lirimahk’s spines snapped out, fanned around her head in a clear show of aggression. She stood, towering in the room. “Here? With these humans? You fool.”

Finnbar’s voice was low. “I’d sit down, if I were you.”

Lirimahk turned, her eyes narrowing and nostrils flaring as she saw Ada standing also, gun drawn. “Miss Carl.”

“You cannot threaten people in my employ and expect that I will not respond,” Ada replied, glad that her hand was steady. It was one thing to put a gun to the back of a man’s head—another to be stood at one’s own table, staring down a seven foot tall Kelchak. (And her leg hurt like hell.) “You have tested the limits of my hospitality once, already. I should hate to cause an incident.”

“Can your people not protect themselves?” Lirimahk asked, her voice full of contempt.

“Can yours not behave as considerate guests?” Ada gazed at her. “The others in your party, I have been told, have caused no problems since they arrived. You, on the other hand, greeted me by threatening the life of one friend, and now you threaten another. You understand, my patience is waning.”

“Kalumahk is not one of your people. He is subject to Kelchak laws and he must return with me.”

“You are not in Kelchak territory, Miss Lirimahk. You are in the New Covenant, on my land—as far as you should be concerned, my word is the only law that matters here. Here, he is called Corbley, and he is a valued citizen of Carlston, placing him squarely under my protection.” She was of the right height to shoot Lirimahk through the lower part of her chest, if she had to. Through a lung. “I suggest you take Mr. Finnbar’s advice, and sit down.”

Reluctant, Lirimahk sat, but her spines still stood high and stiff, vibrating slightly. “You know, then, that Kalumahk is a fugitive.”

“In Carlston that places him in fine company.” Ada sat, lightly laying the gun beside her plate. She put her elbows on the table, leaning forward as she spoke to Lirimahk. “Threaten my people again and you will have no safe harbor in this town.” She sat back. “Now,” she said, smiling, “why don’t we enjoy our dinner, and talk about fucking anything else. Mr. Corbley, you’re welcome to leave whenever you like.”

“And not a moment too damn soon,” Corbley muttered, pushing away from the table and grabbing his hat.

“Mr. Finnbar, I’d like you to accompany Mr. Corbley home. To avoid any misunderstandings.” Ada smiled at Lirimahk.

Finnbar’s eyes flicked between the two of them. “I would prefer, ma’am, not to leave you alone.”

What Finnbar thought he could do unarmed that Ada couldn’t handle armed, she hadn’t the slightest idea, but it was amusing that he was worried about her. “If you’re concerned, Mr. Finnbar, you’re welcome to return to finish your meal, but please, I’ll not ask you again.”

Lirimahk watched in sullen silence as the pair left, but she relaxed slightly, when she heard the door closed. “Though we may have our differences, Miss Carl, you make sense to me, at least.”

“Oh?”

Lirimahk raised her chin. “Your kind is full of fools, that control would ever be laid in the hands of males. It is a relief, I suppose, to find one place where things are as they should be.”

Ester scoffed. “Our kind doesn’t think of it that way.” They had both heard what people from Mallory said, what the people in Carlston learned not to say. “In other cities they call Ada ‘King Carl,’ to mock her for reaching above her place.” That was probably the least awful thing they called her.

Lirimahk snorted. “As if your men have brought about anything but war. Some of your kind sought asylum in Kelchak territory, to escape it.”

“Was it granted?” Ada asked.

“For some,” Lirimahk replied. “But the Kelchak do not care to have your people living among them for the same reason the Covenant does not care for us. And your people have a very difficult time adapting to Kelchak law.”

“They answer to the males,” Ada muttered. “I take it that is not the case, with the Kelchak.”

“We answer to the nested mothers. Those who have brought others into the world.” Lirimahk’s claws tapped softly against her plate. “I have filled no nests myself, but Anapar—my sister-in-law, I believe you would call her—has, and so it was her right to ask me to pursue Kalumahk, and return him.” Lirimahk eyed Ada. “Do you know what crime it was that he committed?”

“No,” Ada said. “I never needed to know. Much of the success I have had here has been owed to Mr. Corbley, and he has never done anything that would betray my trust. Whatever he did, he will tell me if he wishes to.”

“What did he do for you that so earned your loyalty?”

Ada smiled. “He became a friend to me.”

#

“What did you do, exactly?”

Corbley eyed James. “That’s a nosy question, don’t ya think?”

“I had a gun held to my head for it, so, no, I don’t.” James glanced back at the house. “So, why did your sister come chasing you all the way here?”

Corbley was leading him down one of the narrow streets out toward the fields. “You’re the Kelchak expert, you tell me.”

“Corbley,” James said, “I just left Miss Carl and Miss Webb alone with a seven foot tall Kelchak who’s already exhibited hostile behavior, and Carl with a broken leg. You could at least tell me why.”

Corbley snorted. “She ain’t gonna do nothing to them. Nothin’ you could do, anyway, if she wanted to. Carl’d shoot her and that’d be that. But if you’re gonna be so damn sensitive about it—” Corbley rummaged through his pockets, coming up with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “You smoke?”

“No.” Aaron smoked, but he never cared for it, himself.

Corbley stood under the orange haze of one of the solar lamps to light his cigarette, and then started off in the direction of the greenhouses. “I’ve got a condition,” he said, “of the brain.” He tapped the side of his head. “Gives me seizures, sometimes, but I haven’t had as many since I came out here. Not as many triggers, I guess. Happens to be from a gene that can cause all sorts of other problems in Kelchak—blindness, deafness, so on.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, I ain’t finished yet.” Corbley blew a stream of smoke through his nostrils. “Ain’t a crime to be sick. Is a crime to conceal it from somebody who picks you for a sire to their nest.”

James glanced at him. “Why would you do that?”

Corbley sighed. “’Cause I was a fool. ‘Cause I loved her. Stupid, I mean, Anapar already had five sires at the ready, dunno why she took a shine to me. Doesn’t matter, once she found out I had to leave, wasn’t nobody in my own kind was gonna be sympathetic to me.” He shrugged. “I made a good life here. Don’t do nobody any good to spend too much time feeling sorry for myself.”

“Do you have children, then?” James asked.

“Dunno.” Corbley tossed his cigarette on the ground, crushed it under his heel. “Anapar might have destroyed the nest, after I left. It’s the sire that’s supposed to look after the nest, you know, and the kids.” He let out a breath. “Anyway, this is where I stop.”

James glanced up. “You sleep in the greenhouses?”

“Only place that’s warm enough at night without needin’ a heater. Besides,” Corbley smiled a little. “Smell’a hot, damp soil reminds me of home. You’ll be wanting to get back to your dinner, Finnbar, don’t let me hold you up.”

“Corbley,” James said.

Corbley gave him a tired look. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry.”

Corbley considered him for a moment, then nodded. “Goodnight, Finnbar.”

“Goodnight.”


	5. Janesville

Ada resented that she couldn’t run on a broken leg.

Her head was clearest when she ran, in the early hours of the morning when the sun wasn’t yet up. She didn’t actually like being awake that early, but she liked the quiet, the cool air, only the sound of her feet in the dust, and the bugs singing in the weeds.

For now, she was sat at her bedroom window, watching the solar lamps blink out as the sun came over the horizon. Ester was still sleeping, the blankets pulled up to the top of her head. Ada knew that she had been restless in the night and it had probably kept Ester up, and she felt guilty. Some nights it just seemed that she couldn’t keep her eyes closed, that her mind wouldn’t slow down enough to rest. 

The Kelchak were leaving today. She had granted them three days stay, to resupply and rest, on the condition that they left Corbley alone, which as far as she could tell, they had honored. She hadn’t spoken to Lirimahk since that dinner, which didn’t bother her at all. Ada had seen a little of her, basking on the edge of the fields and letting people gawk at her. Many of them had never even seen a Kelchak besides Corbley, and Lirimahk seemed like another creature entirely by comparison.

Corbley was the one Ada was worried about. She had visited some of the mining families with Finnbar in the days since, and every one of them had mentioned Corbley’s foul mood, and how the miners were starting to feel it. Ada had promised she would speak to him, but she was hoping the problem would resolve itself when Lirimahk left.

She heard Mrs. Hammond below in the kitchen, cooking and singing to herself. _Everyone in Carlston is running from something,_ she had told Finnbar. It was a list she kept with everyone close to her, anyone who might become a problem. Mrs. Hammond was suspected to have killed her husband, a mean old drunk picked by her father when she was sixteen. Mrs. Barnes, Finnbar’s landlady, had come with her husband escaping a mountain of debt from Mr. Barnes’ gambling. Pastor Richards was fleeing scandal.

James Finnbar was a branded heretic well enough known to go by a false name and flee to a frontier mining town to begin again. She had asked him what that ‘not insignificant’ bounty on his head was, and he had told her that the last time he had heard, it was a hundred thousand units. He must have known she would look into it, and find the list of heretics with that kind of price on their head very short indeed.

It only confirmed Corbley’s suspicions about him, and she knew that the safe thing to do would be to get rid of him, to call in the Bishop’s Men and reap the rewards of handing them such a wanted man.

She also knew that she wasn’t going to do that.

Ada had known he would be useful when Corbley first brought Finnbar to Carlston, but more than that, she liked him, or wanted to like him, nuisance though he was. It was a feeling in her gut that told her James Finnbar was someone she wanted to have around, which was why he pissed her off so much.

A gut feeling wasn’t much to go on, but it had saved Ada’s hide more than a few times in the past. At the very least, it wouldn’t hurt to keep him around for a while.

Ada pulled her crutch under her arm and dragged herself to her feet, hobbling over to the bed. She pressed a kiss to the top of Ester’s head, and started for the stairs, too restless to sit still much longer.

Mrs. Hammond had already made a pot of tea, which Ada helped herself to, stirring in a decent helping of cream. “What’s for breakfast?” she asked.

“Eggs and fried pede legs.” Mrs. Hammond glanced up. “You’ll be needing your pain medicine?”

“I’m supposed to take it with food, it can wait.” Ada started toward the door, mug held in her free hand.

“Miss, I can get the door—”

“No, I’ve got it,” Ada said, fumbling with the doorknob and shoving the door open with her elbow. She hated being helpless. This wasn’t so bad as when the pede had ruined her lung, she supposed, but irritating nonetheless. She would have to undergo therapy before she could run again.

She settled herself at the table on the porch, which gave her a clear view of the main street. It let her see who was coming and going, to keep an eye on the happenings.

And on days like this, it let her know that Finnbar was an hour early to their meeting time, and was almost already to her steps. “Mr. Finnbar,” she said, leaning her crutch against the rail. “The hell are you doing here at this hour?”

Finnbar jogged up the steps, taking off his hat with a polite nod. “When I returned to Mrs. Barnes’ house last night, she informed me that she had invited Mrs. Perkins and her three daughters to breakfast. So, I rose early, and slipped out before she had the coffee on.” He leaned against the porch rail, arms folded, and the hour or so less of sleep showing on his face.

“Christ alive,” Ada muttered, “The oldest Perkins girl is only nineteen.” Why Mrs. Barnes had decided to play matchmaker for Finnbar, of all the single men in her house, she couldn’t fathom.

“I didn’t know that but I feel much more secure in my decision to avoid them, now.” Finnbar looked at her. “How is your leg?”

“Just as broken as it was yesterday, thank you for asking.” Ada sipped at her tea. “Why don’t you step inside and let Mrs. Hammond know you’re here, so she makes a third plate. I’d do it myself but I just sat down and I’m not getting up again until I’ve eaten.”

“You don’t have to feed me, ma’am.”

“I’m uncomfortable eating in front of someone who’s just standing there, I assure you my motives are entirely selfish. Kitchen’s just off the dining room, if you aren’t prone to getting lost I imagine you’ll be able to find it.” God, she wished she could go for a run.

Finnbar returned shortly with his own cup of tea, and took the seat that Ada kicked out from under the table. “So what are we about today?”

“Same as yesterday. Going through to visit families, to make more personal introductions. You seemed to find it tedious.” Ada was given to wonder if Finnbar was as bad at cards as he was at pretending to enjoy a social engagement.

“Not tedious, only—uncomfortable.” He sat back. “For them and myself.”

“You’ve still got the shine of newness on you,” Ada said, “let a little more Carlston dust sink into your skin and they’ll get used to you.”

“Miss Carl.”

“Yes?”

Finnbar hesitated over his words. “I was… in Dr. Boulos’ office, I was—unduly rude.”

Ada glanced away. “It’s not something we need to discuss.”

“Isn’t it?”

Ada grimaced. “I think you made your feelings on the matter perfectly clear.”

“I am not used to people being sympathetic.” He was gazing directly at her, now, which only made the whole thing more unbearable. “Shocked, horrified, yes, but not sympathetic. And I didn’t expect it from you.”

“Yes, I gather you have a rather low opinion of me,” Ada said, cringing the moment she said it. If Ester saw her behaving like that she would never hear the end of it.

“That’s not—”

“You would not be unique in that regard, Mr. Finnbar, I assure you it’s quite common.” Why, why, _why_ couldn’t she seem to keep her mouth shut?

“For a very long time,” Finnbar said, stubbornly pressing on, “anyone who has seen that brand has assumed I was a monster, and treated me accordingly. I assumed you would do the same. I was wrong.”

Ada finally managed to shut up, not sure what to say. She set down her tea. “I was going to tell you I was sorry,” she said, “for what was done to you. And I am sorry just now for making an ass of myself.” She glanced away down the street. She had always been bad at this.

Finnbar let out a breath. “Thank you.”

“There’s something else,” Ada said, eager to change the subject. “It’s about Corbley.”

Finnbar looked up. “What about him?”

“He’s—not been himself, since Lirimahk arrived. I’m hoping it will be better when they leave today, but I’d like you to check up on him, once we’re done.” She hated that she was asking someone else to do this. “I’d do it myself but… he hasn’t wanted to see me.” Corbley avoiding her was the worst part of all this. She didn’t know what to do to fix it, because she wasn’t entirely sure what she had done wrong.

“I’ll see him,” Finnbar said.

“You don’t need to report back to me, except to tell me how he’s doing,” Ada told him. “I just want to know that he’s okay.” 

#

James didn’t remember what his mother’s face had looked like. He had been four, when she died, and Ruth, who was thirteen then, said that their father had taken down all the pictures of her and burned them.

He remembered his mother’s hair, the same red-brown of the clay riverbed near their home. He remembered her voice, the way she sang and prayed. But her face—the more he tried to remember it the more it evaded him.

All three of his sisters, like him, had taken more after their father, so he couldn’t even guess from their resemblance, couldn’t assemble a portrait of her in his mind. One might have imagined they didn’t have a mother at all, except for the never spoken about wound that her absence created in the house.

One of his clearest, earliest memories was of her funeral. It was hot, Hannah and Leah were both crying, but not Ruth. She held his hand, her face stony, watching as their mother was buried—and alongside her, their youngest brother, born dead. ‘Baby Abel’ was what they put on the stone, but the few times he was ever spoken of, people only called him ‘the baby.’

“Was your pa’s fault,” their mother’s sister told Ruth, her clothes stinking of beer, “his side of the family always throwing such big babies. Doctor told your ma and your pa both she shouldn’t have another child, not after the last one.”

He had felt Ruth’s hand tremble, and tighten around his so much that it hurt. “Go to hell,” Ruth spit, and stormed off, dragging him behind her. They sat in the back of their father’s truck until the funeral was over, and Ruth didn’t say another word. She just trembled.

He didn’t remember crying. He must have, but he didn’t remember it. He never remembered Ruth crying, either, when she stopped going to the schoolhouse with Hannah and Leah and stayed home with him, cooking and keeping the house in order the way their mother had. Making sure he washed his hands and said his prayers. Sending him to school with Hannah and Leah when he was old enough, with no more than a “You be good, Jamie,” and a wave.

He hadn’t understood, when she’d turned nineteen and run off with the first man to ask for her hand. He was fifteen years older than her, and he traveled around the colony with a performers troupe, putting on short plays and such for money.

He was only ten, Ruth was the only mother he knew. Their father raged drunk for weeks after she left, destroying half the house. Hannah was sixteen, she barricaded the door to their room, and when they heard their father snoring they fled into the fields with whatever food they could carry. The pastor let them sleep on the floor of the church until their father came looking for them, full of shame, promising things wouldn’t get so bad again. The old women whispered at Sunday service.

Hannah stopped going to school. She said someone had to do the cooking and the washing, now that Ruth was gone. She was twenty, when she married the shopkeeper, and their baby was born six months later.

There was never any food in the house. Their father didn’t work, hadn’t in years. James only found out how their rent was being paid when he found Leah screaming at their father with their mother’s empty jewelry box in her hands. His father was too drunk to respond, until Leah began to hit him with the box, furious tears on her face, and James had to wrestle her away.

Ruth wrote, and sometimes she sent money, so Leah and James both watched for the post, secreting it away before their father knew. He caught James with the envelope once, and left him so bloody that the mere sight of James’ bruised face was enough to keep him away until it healed.

They went to Hannah’s house to eat as often as they could, gorging themselves until their stomachs ached. Leah was restless, she talked of running away. “There’s nothing for us here, Jamie. We gotta get out.”

“Where?”

“I don’t care, anywhere.” Leah had looked him up and down, the way Mr. Lawrence’s appraisers looked at the harvest. “You could do fights. You’re big enough. You fight the other boys often enough, might as well make money doing it.”

He fought the other boys because it seemed like they could smell something different, something weak on him. He fought the other boys because if he didn’t, they would kill him. “You only make money if you win.”

Leah nodded. “So win.”

#

“Hold this,” Carl said, shoving a box into James’ hands. She had pulled it out of the back of the truck as he came around to offer a hand as she got down, but Carl was entirely disinterested in any assistance, sliding her good leg to the ground and getting her crutch under her, throwing the door shut behind her. “This is the Randall house, Mr. Randall runs the garage and repairs.”

James vaguely remembered being introduced to Mr. Randall when they had crossed paths with him two days before, on their way to a different house.

There were two children out front playing with a ball, a girl of about twelve and a boy a few years younger, both barefoot and covered in dust. “Miss Carl!” The girl abandoned the ball, running up to them with a grin. “It’s my birthday.”

“I thought I heard a rumor about that,” Carl said, smiling. She took the box from James, holding it out to the girl. “Happy birthday, Joanna.”

Joanna looked delighted before she even had her hands on the box, tearing off the lid to find a brand new pair of dancing shoes. “Thank you, Miss Carl!”

“Go clean your feet off and try them on,” Carl said. “Is your mother inside?”

“Yes’m, she’s making a pie.” Joanna seemed to notice James for the first time and was suddenly shy. “Morning, Mr. Finnbar.”

“Good morning,” he answered, tipping his hat.

“Go on, off with you,” Carl said, waving a hand. “To the sink for those dirty feet.” Joanna raced up the steps and disappeared into the house, leaving her brother with the ball.

“Good morning, Henry,” Carl said, mussing the boy’s hair as she hobbled her way to the steps. “Can’t kick the ball around today, I’m afraid.”

Henry nodded, staring at both of them with wide dark eyes. He took the ball in both hands and ran after his sister, the door banging loose in the frame. A woman shouted inside, reprimanding him, and shortly after appeared in the door, flour on her apron. “I’m sorry about that, Miss Carl, I swear he gets more wild every day.”

Carl grasped the rail with her free hand, taking the steps one at a time. “Ah, it’s no trouble, Mrs. Randall. He’s a good boy.”

“I could help you, you know,” James muttered.

“I could hit you in the face with this crutch,” Carl replied, with the same tone.

Mrs. Randall held the door open for them, gently ushering them into a carefully arranged sitting room. No lace, but a crisp white table cloth, and thriving flowers in pots along the window. Some of them were green Earth plants, others were blue natives. The furniture was secondhand, but well cared for. Carl took a seat she was apparently accustomed to, by the window, where she could see the door.

James held his hat in both hands, not sure where he was meant to sit. Like all sitting rooms it was unfortunately small, and he felt doomed to knock into something at any moment.

“I’ve just made some lemonade, if you’d like any,” Mrs. Randall said.

“Thank you, I would,” Carl said, stowing her crutch behind the chair.

“Mr. Finnbar?” Mrs. Randall looked at him, reserved.

“Yes, please, ma’am.” He had learned very quickly that it was bad form to turn down an offered drink or food, even when he had no desire for either. The look Carl had given him the first (and only) time he had done so had been icy, and she had whacked him in the shin with her crutch the moment they were alone—not quite hard enough to bruise, but almost. _Don’t you ever let me hear that you refused their hospitality ever again._

“Sit down, Finnbar,” Carl said as Mrs. Randall left. “Otherwise she might think you’re being awkward because you’re sweet on her.” She seemed amused by the whole thing, admiring Mrs. Randall’s lilies. “Then Mrs. Barnes will think the problem with the Perkins girls is that they’re pale and blond.”

The narrow sofa was clearly meant for shorter people than James, but he distrusted the look of an old wooden chair not far from where Carl sat. “Do you keep track of everyone’s birthdays, or just your favorites?”

Carl glanced at him. “I have a calendar.” She shrugged. “Joanna and Henry were some of the first kids in Carlston. I suppose I’m fond of them. Ah, speak of the devil!” Carl sat forward with a grin. “Henry, please come in.”

James glanced to the door. Henry Randall stared back at him, all elbows and knees, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt, which looked to have frayed from his tugging.

“This is Mr. Finnbar,” Carl said, “he’ll be coming by with me for a while. It’s alright, he doesn’t bite.” She patted the chair next to her. “Even left your favorite chair open for you.”

Henry skittered past him like a mouse, settling into the chair to stare intently at Carl, and the splint on her leg. “Momma said you got hurt because of the centipede.”

Carl nodded. “Could have been a lot worse, I’ll be right in a few weeks. How are those books I brought you?”

“I finished them,” Henry said, hugging his knees to his chest.

“Already?” Carl looked genuinely shocked. “I thought those would keep you busy for at least a month.”

“It’s all he ever looks at anymore, those books,” Mrs. Randall said, returning with a pitcher of lemonade and some glasses. She wore a clean apron. “I wish he had a teacher, sometimes, but he seems to be doing just fine on his own.”

“Why don’t you get some of your books, show me and Mr. Finnbar what you’ve been up to,” Carl said, giving Henry a nudge.

Henry slipped off the chair and disappeared once more, oddly quiet. Mrs. Randall sighed as she poured lemonade, shaking her head. “I don’t know what the Lord was doing, when he gave me that boy. Takes to books like a fish to water but he forgets to eat or drink water. He’d lose his head if it weren’t attached.”

“When he’s older I’ll have to fight to keep him here,” Carl said, “I don’t want some church school to steal him away.” She accepted her glass with a quiet thank you, and her voice softened. “How have you been, Sarah?”

Mrs. Randall glanced at James before she answered. “I’ve been well,” she said, in a reserved tone. She handed him a glass and took a seat across from Carl. “Paul’s been recovering.”

“Mr. Randall was injured in his shop a few weeks ago,” Carl told James. “Minor explosion. He’s alright, minor burns, mostly. Dr. Boulos says he’ll hardly have a scar.”

“I’m sorry to hear that he was hurt,” James said.

Mrs. Randall shrugged it off, apparently uncomfortable to be discussing it with him. He had the same feeling he had with most of the other families he had visited with Carl; he was intruding on a visit that they otherwise looked forward to, a chance to speak privately with their landowner, a person many of them seemed to consider a friend. Carl kept insisting they only needed to get used to him, but James remained unconvinced. The people of Carlston valued that direct connection to Carl in a way they never would a middleman. She couldn’t possibly not understand, she was too smart for that—

—which made him wonder what she was really up to.

“Joanna’s growing up like a weed,” Carl said. “She’ll be tall as her father, soon.”

“She told me you gave her shoes?”

“Dancing shoes.” Ada said. “I ordered them for her especially, from a company I trust. She’ll outgrow them before they wear out.”

“I don’t know, you’d be surprised. I think she’s going to wear holes in our floors.” Mrs. Randall fussed for a moment at her glass and looked to James. “Do you have any children, Mr. Finnbar?”

He had been hearing that question more than he cared to. “No, ma’am. I’ve some nephews but I haven’t seen them since they were small.” The first time he had been asked this in Carlston he had realized that Hannah’s oldest boys were grown men by now. He hadn’t laid eyes on them since they were learning their first words. She might have others, might have daughters, for all he knew. If either Ruth or Leah had children he didn’t know about them.

“Ah,” Mrs. Randall said. “You’ve never been married, then?”

“No, ma’am.” Always those two questions, at every house, and usually a knowing glance at Carl.

Carl, who didn’t seem to be enjoying the turn the conversation had taken, reached for her crutch, saying, “Did your husband finish that work on your kitchen you were telling me about, last time? I’d like to see it. Finnbar, you needn’t trouble yourself, I’ll only be a moment.”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Randall said, seizing at the opportunity to speak to her alone. “Just this way.”

Their absence left James to rise and look for anything mildly interesting on the walls. A few family portraits, some cross stitch. He was looking at a photograph of what he took to be Carlston before it was Carlston, nothing more than a camp of tents around the mine, with Carl carrying a shovel across her shoulders and grinning while she stood in the middle of a line of men. She had to have been twenty or just barely older, when the photo was taken. Corbley was there, too, arms folded, just to Carl’s right.

A movement caught his eye, and he turned to find Henry, hugging a thick textbook and a sketchpad to his chest and staring at James.

“Miss Carl and your mother went to the kitchen,” James said.

Henry nodded, and didn’t move.

James hesitated, and sat down. “What’ve you got there?”

Henry sat in front of the low table and set the book down too gently, as if afraid of the noise it would make if he dropped it. It was a mathematics textbook, worn with age, likely a cast off from a church library. He pushed the book at James, apparently expecting him to take a look at it.

The pages were full of pencil marks in a shaky child’s hand, and James had never been much for mathematics, but he could recognize that, chaotic though it was, the boy knew what he was doing. He glanced at Henry. “You do a lot like this?”

Henry nodded, and finally spoke. “Miss Carl buys the books for me because she says I need something to keep me busy.”

James smiled a little. “Get into trouble when you’re bored?”

“I took apart the clocks, once.” Henry bit a knuckle, and then smiled. “Papa was mad.”

James laughed, flipping through a few more of the pages. So that’s why Corbley had pressed him like that about being a schoolteacher. He couldn’t have done anything for Henry, that was certain. Henry Randall didn’t need a teacher, he needed a challenge. “Did you put them back together?”

“I just wanted to see how they worked.”

“No, then.” He started to close the book and his eyes landed on something else on the title pages. A sketch of the inside of the tavern, only stripped down to the bare architectural elements. He only recognized it by the stage.

Seeing that he had noticed that, Henry fumbled for his sketchpad, opening it up and pushing it across the table at James. This was the tavern from the outside, and as James looked through the pages he recognized the garage, the general store, Carl’s house, and the irrigation tanks along the fields. “Do you like to see how all these work, too?” he asked, glancing up.

Henry nodded. “Miss Carl says when I get older she’ll give me a job working with the engineers. Says I’m good at that sort of thing.” He picked at the threads on the hem of his shirt.

James turned to another sketch and stopped, staring. It was the interior of a church, one he knew well.

Every Sunday from the time he was an infant to when Ruth left he had sat in that church, seen it from that angle.

“Is your family from Janesville?” His voice caught on the question, as if the name of the town snagged in his throat.

Henry nodded. “We left when I was five.”

Five. Five years old and yet he remembered that much of the church? James looked at the portraits on the wall again, trying to guess how old Paul Randall was. The name wasn’t familiar to him, but it had been years—

“Finnbar.” Carl was leaning in the door frame, Mrs. Randall just behind her. “Are you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Fine,” James said, glancing away and turning another page in the sketchbook. “Henry was just showing me his sketches.”

“Remarkable, aren’t they?” Carl asked, coming into the room. “I’ll have to order you new books,” she sighed, opening the textbook. “Maybe something different. Mechanics, maybe? And some new architecture books, I know you love those.”

“He could use some work on his scripture,” Mrs. Randall said. “He’s been avoiding his lessons with Pastor Richards.”

Henry grimaced. “It’s all boring,” he said, “and the words are hard.”

“He does fine when he puts his mind to it,” Mrs. Randall told Carl. “Even memorizes the genealogies without any mistakes.”

Carl patted Henry on the head. “Go to your lessons, or I’ll hold onto those books until you do. Alright?”

Henry sighed, and nodded. “Yes, Miss Carl.”

Carl looked at James, her face giving nothing away. “I’m afraid we have to cut this short. It’s time to go, Mr. Finnbar.” 

#

There was no kitchen work, but Ada knew Sarah Randall to be a quick-minded woman and she relaxed visibly when she was away from Finnbar. “Paul isn’t well,” she said, “I think he went back to work too soon, and the others at the garage think so, too. It’s just his pride, and he hates being bored around the house.”

“I can ask Dr. Boulos to check up on him,” Ada said, “to gently recommend some further rest, if he deems it necessary. Or at least that he take it easy.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Randall said, letting out a breath. “I’m worried about him.”

“I’ll keep an eye on him.” Ada leaned against the kitchen counter, wishing she hadn’t left her chair. Boulos would throw a fit if he knew how much walking she was doing.

Mrs. Randall got a teasing smile on her face. “So, what’s the story with Mr. Finnbar?”

God in Heaven, not this again. “What do you mean?” Ada asked, feigning ignorance.

“Well, he did appear rather suddenly,” Mrs. Randall said, “we didn’t even know you were looking for a sheriff, and then one just appears. Handsome, too.”

They kept saying that. Ada was of the opinion that James Finnbar looked prematurely aged and too morose. It was like staring at a hound dog every day. She supposed she could see on an objective level that he wasn’t ugly, but she didn’t see what all the fuss was about.

“There’s no story,” Ada said. “He only appeared at the right time.” The only person she wanted to believe anything was Pastor Richards, so naturally the entire town had to think there was something to ask about, something worth giving her knowing smiles over, as if Finnbar couldn’t see them.

“You know, you’re not getting any younger,” Mrs. Randall said, as if of course Ada should agree with her. “If you were looking for a husband, you could do a lot worse.”

As if she knew anything about Finnbar other than that he was unmarried, childless, and seemed reasonably polite. “Could do a lot better, too,” Ada said. “Finnbar has hardly a dime to his name. I’m not on the lookout for a husband, Sarah, but I appreciate your concern.” There wouldn’t be half so many people giving her sly looks if they had seen the brand on Finnbar’s shoulder.

“Well, if you insist.” She looked unconvinced. “I just think, a woman your age, unmarried—”

“Perfectly happy as I am,” Ada said, giving a smile. “And Mr. Finnbar is just a friend.” If he was even that. 

#

The first thing Carl said when they were back in the truck was, “Your speech is affected.”

James looked at her. “Excuse me?”

“The way you speak. You’re educated, I can tell that, but it doesn’t come naturally to you.” Carl glanced at him. “I wouldn’t normally point it out, except—”

“Except _what?”_

“What was it you saw in Henry’s sketchbook that spooked you like that?” She was studying him, the way she had when they first met. “All that kid draws is buildings.”

James started the truck, if for no other reason than it gave him an excuse not to look at Carl. “It wasn’t anything.”

“I’d invite you to remember that I told you not to lie to me, Finnbar.” She pulled her hat down on her head. “People who lie to me don’t tend to survive long here.”

James gripped the wheel. “They’re from Janesville.”

Carl’s eyes were burning through the side of his skull. “I take it that means something to you.”

“I was born there.” She knew she could ask him who he was. He would tell her. He wouldn’t want to, but he would, and then they could both live with the consequences. He didn’t know what she got from this guessing game, this waiting for him to unravel and reveal himself.

Perhaps he should just tell her, except that he didn’t know what she would do if he did. Whatever uses she had for him couldn’t be outweighed by the price of sheltering him, if she knew exactly who he was and didn’t give him to the church. Maybe that was why she didn’t ask. Maybe on some level, she knew.

“I see.” She looked away. “We’re to the tavern next. I want to make sure our Kelchak guests are on schedule.”

“Where are you from, originally?” James asked. “Since we’re speaking of birthplaces.”

It was a jab, and one that Carl didn’t answer at first. “The Carls settled in Safe Harbor, before the Separation, as the colony started to expand. We made our name on canneries and salt, and eventually my great-grandfather branched into the railways.”

“Safe Harbor, that’s on the coast?”

“Yes.” She looked at him curiously.

“I’ve never seen the ocean.”

Carl’s eyebrows flew under her hat. “What?”

“I never had cause to go that far east.” He glanced at her, the anger fading. “How does it compare to this place?”

Carl considered that. “It’s too quiet here,” she said. “Back home, you could always hear the water breaking on the rocks, the kite lizards flying—God, they can scream—and the air smells different. Brine and rot. I suppose some people don’t like it, but that’s what home smells like to me. This place—it’s just dust.” She shrugged. “I’ll get used to it eventually, I suppose. The heat and the still. What was Janesville like?”

James summoned up a memory of it, the town so much older than Carlston, steeped so much deeper in the aftermath of the Separation, of the church’s rise. “There were trees there. Green trees, grown from seeds brought by the first settlers. They get taller than the native trees, bigger around… My father worked in the orchards, until he was too drunk to do that. I started out working there, when I was fourteen. Pay was shit, though, so I left for the Settlement when I was sixteen, started fighting in rings.”

“Which rings?”

“The kind that don’t have names and spring up wherever they need to be.” The kind of rings that were made with some stained old planks to hold back the press of people, all howling for blood because they laid too much money on the heads of fighters. A lot of money had changed hands whenever James fought.

“Explains your nose,” Carl said, teasing. “How many times did somebody flatten it for you?”

James laughed. “I stopped counting.”

“Were you good?”

“Yeah.” James nodded. “Yeah, I was good.”

He stopped in front of the tavern and again Carl managed to get out of the truck before he could get around to open the door, negotiating her way to the ground. She gave him an annoyed look. “I didn’t hire you to be a nurse, Finnbar.” She held onto the door, something catching her eye. “What’s this, now?”

James followed her gaze. They were being approached by one of the Kelchak, the other female that had come with Lirimahk. Her coloring was different, the spines on her head tipped with green, and her face narrower. She inclined her head with the spines laid low in a gesture of respect, and then glanced nervously between the two of them. _“I cannot speak much of your language, but you,”_ she said to James, _“you speak mine?”_

 _“Enough of it,”_ he said.

 _“My name is Hanasut,”_ she said, _“I am a physician, I wish to negotiate with Miss Carl.”_ She said the name like “miskaral.”

Carl blinked, when he translated for her. “Negotiate for what? I’m not budging on my deadline, I want them out by nightfall.”

 _“I wish to become a resident,”_ Hanasut said. _“I am the only one requesting this. The others intend to leave as ordered.”_

Carl did not answer with any great haste, studying Hanasut. “Ask her why.”

 _“Kalumahk requires medical care which it is my duty to provide.”_ Carl bristled when she recognized Corbley’s name. Hanasut hesitated, and added, _“I have no interest in removing him from this place. Only to stay for a time, to provide care, and to learn your language.”_

“Ask her why,” Carl said again, and Hanasut seemed surprised when James repeated the question.

 _“Miss Carl takes Mr. Corbley’s welfare very seriously,”_ James told her, _“and her trust is hard-earned. Please understand, she means no insult to your word.”_

Hanasut nodded. _“Our colonies fear and distrust each other, but we are neighbors. I wish to help ease the fear between us, but to do so, I must know something of your people, and I must know your language. Mister… Corbley can help me, and I can help him. Mutual exchange.”_

Carl nodded, but still wasn’t hasty with her answer. She steadied herself. “Mr. Finnbar, if you’ll accompany Miss Hanasut to the mine, and explain to Mr. Corbley, please let him know I give the entirety of the decision to him.”

“And what will you be doing while I run this errand?” James asked

“Who are you, my mother?” Carl’s surly mood was making a rapid return. “I’ll be having a drink and keeping an eye on everyone else. Now go on and do what I pay you for.”

“Which is what, exactly?” James asked as she started toward the tavern.

The answer was swift and curt. “Everything I tell you to do.” 

#

Janesville wasn’t a name that meant anything to Ada. She looked it up while she sat in the tavern, and found it to be small, significant only for the number of apples it produced and its proximity to the settlement. She paged through pictures of orchards, a few news headlines, but found nothing of any particular interest. If Finnbar was who she thought he was, his family had been insignificant in an insignificant town.

What kind of man could a place like that breed? A man hungry to be of consequence, a man hungry to create something in his own image.

Could such a man accept a life under a name that meant nothing, in a place that wasn’t yet something?

It was too much to ignore and yet—

Something didn’t feel right about it.

As long as they didn’t speak of it directly, she could deny that she had known. All she had was suspicions, pieces of a puzzle that didn’t quite fit. Not enough to justify accusing someone. Not enough that the church could really pin her down, if it came to that.

“Ma’am?” Finnbar stood in front of her, hand on the back of a chair.

She turned her tablet over. “Well?”

“Hanasut will be staying.”

That was surprising. Ada picked up her drink, wishing it were something stronger. She wanted to see Corbley, but not until she could talk to him alone. “That’s that, then.”

“What next, ma’am?” James asked.

A damn good question, Ada thought.


	6. Sins of the Father

It was Leah, who got the train tickets. She wouldn’t say where she had got the money, but James could guess, from the way that she wouldn’t quite meet his eye. “We’ll go to the Settlement,” she said, “there’s always a way to make money there.”

It didn’t really matter to either of them whether there was a way to make money or not. They just had to leave, to get away, and Leah was determined to take James with her. “Ruth and Hannah both left us. It’s just you and me, now, so we’ve gotta stick together.” She took his hand, squeezing it. 

They were alone for now, their father off drinking somewhere. He wasn’t likely to return at all until sometime the next morning, when he was sober enough to find his way home. They huddled over a lamp in the bedroom—the lights had been cut months before, all they had were the lamps—turning the tickets over and over, not quite believing they were real, that they were so close to freedom.

“When do we go?” James asked.

“Tomorrow.” Leah was shaking a little. “You have everything?”

‘Everything’ was his clothes, shoved into an old pack, a pocket knife, and what little money he had been able to keep from his job in the orchards. “Yeah, it’s all packed.”

Leah nodded, muttering to herself as she made sure they were prepared. She had been hiding any money Ruth or Hannah sent, and she counted what they had again, neither of them having any idea if it would be enough.

“What are you going to do?” James asked.

Leah wouldn’t look at him again. “I don’t know yet. Maybe some rich woman will need a maid. I’ll figure it out. But you’re our money-maker, yeah,” she said, smiling. “Gotta get you in the ring the second we hit the ground.” 

#

Slowly but surely, James found he was adjusting to Carlston. The town moved in predictable cycles, and he found his own step within them.

On Fridays he went with Corbley to distribute pay, working from the meticulously kept list provided them by Carl’s bookkeepers. The field workers in the morning, the miners in the early evening, everyone else somewhere in between.

He was beginning to match faces to names, and even to find people that he liked, people he greeted with a smile and asked after their families or their health without having to think about it. People who smiled when they saw him and asked how he was doing, and did he want to to the tavern with them when work was done?

Saturdays were, barring unforeseen trouble or a fight in the tavern, his to do with as he liked. He found a package of new guitar strings slipped into his pay one Friday, and spent the following day replacing those on the borrowed guitar, sat on Mrs. Barnes’ porch and remembering what quiet felt like. He rarely saw Carl on Saturdays, when it seemed she was doing her damndest to not be seen by anyone, holed up in her house for a day’s total withdrawal from the town, until the meeting in the tavern.

The meetings were dull, but James went to them all the same, listening to the goings on and noting which faces were always there, and which he only saw when they had a problem. Often as not there would be a few drinks passed around the meeting, gossip to be had. Carl would ask about it, sometimes, but James must not have gleaned anything she had any interest in, because she didn’t press him for details.

Interestingly, Hanasut always came to the meetings, sitting next to Corbley as he translated for her. It was difficult to tell exactly what their relationship was, but Corbley didn’t seem to mind his new shadow, and James rarely saw one without the other. What Carl thought of all this, she kept to herself. Even when James asked, she only shrugged.

Sunday mornings he rose and shaved and put on his good suit, and sat through yet another of Pastor Richards’ sermons. Charity seemed to be his favorite theme, though he found plenty of time for chastity and repentance, too. He became well familiar with hearing subtle turns that seemed to be directed at him, particularly—Richards being convinced that James was there to lead Carl astray. His best reaction was to give none at all, to simply stare back at the fresh-faced young preacher who looked as though he had never seen a day’s hardship in his life until Richards was forced to look away.

Carl, for her part, took no small amount of delight in needling Richards’ jealousy, church services being the only time she ever accepted courtesy from James. He would hold the door for her, and she would smile. Knowing full well what she was up to, he would offer to take her and Webb to their seats anyway, and they would accept. When she met him at the end of the service she would put a hand on his arm, smile prettily to say it was time to go, and Richards’ would see just enough of it to make his face go pink as he collected his hymnals.

The brothel garden would be ready and welcoming, and Daisy would always make her over-enthusiastic greeting to Carl and flirt with James. Carl brought gifts and questions and left with all the gossip and rumor she could ever desire, clapping James on the shoulder and telling Micah (who always seemed to find his way to James’ side) to remember that she needed her sheriff to be able to work the next day.

It was Micah who occupied his Sunday afternoons, Micah with his practiced smiles and that soft, tender voice that eased his worries away, against his better judgment.

Micah had managed to secure a room on the coveted north side of the house, which was the coolest during the dry months, and he told James with a mischievous grin that it certainly hadn’t hurt his circumstances at all that he was ‘the sheriff’s favorite.’ James gathered he was supposed to be amused by this, but it only made him swim in his guilt.

Micah noticed, and ran his fingers along James’ jaw, kissing him sweet as honey and God, James wished he had sense enough not to fall for it but it had been so long since he had a moment like this, a moment that wasn’t stolen between battles, a moment that wasn’t full of anger or desperation.

Micah looked like Aaron but he wasn’t like him, not at all. There was no knife’s edge to his smile, no venom in his voice. When he laughed, he meant it, or at least it seemed like he did.

Micah settled against James’ side in the bed, propped up on his elbow. “I hear a rumor,” he said with a smile, “that you can’t dance.”

James smiled a little. “From where, might I ask?”

“Oh, I could never tell,” Micah replied, “my sources value their anonymity above all else.”

He liked spending time with Micah, even if it was Micah laughing at him for being graceless and stumbling. It was never mean-spirited, never anything but comfortable and somehow familiar, and James spent the rest of the week in the glow of those Sunday afternoons, with the memory of Micah’s smiles and laughing eyes.

He was glad for that, because every Monday morning he would meet Carl and they would start the circuit again. It wasn’t always visiting homes—often as not it was more tedious than that, taking reports from whoever was in charge of the fields, the latest construction project, and there was something wrong with this thing or that thing that would have to be fixed, and had Carl heard what had happened to that shipment of fabric?

The real purpose of his accompanying her on these rounds came whenever Carl had to mediate a dispute. Most were minor, disputes over work hours or conditions and neighbors behaving poorly—for a time, James thought that was all he would have to deal with.

Until one afternoon when Dr. Boulos sent a nurse to find them, her face grey. “Dr. Boulos says you need to come see this,” was all she said.

He had in his office a boy of about seventeen—James remembered he worked in the fields, his name was Abe. He was bruised and bloody, and had more cuts than James wanted to count. His right eye was so swollen it was doubtful he could see out of it.

Carl looked at him with an impassive face, but James could see the way her jaw tightened, and the grip around the cane she had adopted in lieu of her crutch. “What happened, Mr. Cole?”

“Was that fucking lizard—pardon, Miss—not Mr. Corbley but the other one.” He told a story in which he and Hanasut had a dispute during which Abe claimed to have been drunk—which was interesting, considering it was morning and he should have been working, and there wasn’t a whiff of alcohol on him at all. Carl said nothing while he spoke, and when Abe had finished she thanked him and said she would look into it.

Outside, she stood under the shade of the steps, fanning herself with her hat. “What do you think?” she asked.

James let out a breath. “I think I pulled his father out of a fight in the tavern two nights in a row. I think if we ask Hanasut about it, she won’t have any idea who Abe Cole is.” The cuts were too clean to be from claws, and even if they weren’t—if it came down to physical combat between an adult Kelchak female and a human, very few were the humans that would leave that encounter alive.

“What’s your measure of Joseph Cole?” Carl asked.

“He’s a drunk,” James said, “and a mean one at that. A man who can’t stand a slight.”

Carl shook her head. “I have to speak to Hanasut. And after that, we’ll talk to Joseph Cole.”  She put her hat back on, face grim. “I used to be able to catch things before they got this bad. Town’s too big, now.”

“You can’t prevent everything,” James told her. “The important thing is ending it.”

“Sure,” Carl said, stepping out into the harsh sunlight, “tell me that again when I have to put someone in the ground for it.”

#

They took the train in the dead of night, everything they had in two old canvas bags. Leah used her overcoat as a blanket, slumped against the window with her bag as a pillow, but James was too anxious to sleep, jumping at every noise, afraid of he didn’t know what. His mind invented devils in every shadow and every passenger that passed by their compartment became a thief or murderer.

Without anything to distract himself he stayed awake all night, dawn breaking as the train rattled across a bridge bearing them over Devil’s Canyon, a thin thread of a river gleaming silver down below, pale blue trees clinging to the hillsides. It was the farthest he had ever been from Janesville.

They were on the train for another two nights, Leah chatting with anyone who would talk to her, learning whatever she could about the Settlement, already looking for work, and James’ mind was always somewhere else, either fearing what was to come or what they had left behind.

“What do you think will happen to him?” he asked Leah on the second night, as they settled down to sleep.

Leah didn’t ask who he meant. “I couldn’t give less of a shit, really,” she said. She stuffed her bag against the wall again. “The way he’s going? He’ll fall down drunk in a ditch one night and won’t get up in the morning, and John Christopher is just gonna be a name in the obits.” Leah looked at him for a moment, and mussed his hair. “Don’t worry about it, Jamie. He’s been trying to join Momma ever since she died.” 

#

Corbley had gouged three long scars into the top of Ada’s desk that she was never going to be able to smooth out. “She’s accused’a what?”

Ada let out a breath. “You know I have to speak to her. I don’t think she did it anymore than you do, but I have to be seen to have properly looked into it.”

The air in her office was suffocating, but she couldn’t risk having the window open while she handled something like this. Listening ears always seemed to find their way to her windows.

Ada slumped in a chair with her hat as a fan, holding a glass of ice water to her cheek. Finnbar was being quiet, hanging back by the door. He hadn’t said much, since they left Boulos’ office.

“The only reason anybody’d accuse Hanasut is because she’s Kelchak,” Corbley said, all four of his eyes narrowed to yellow crescents.

“I know that,” Ada said, “and it’s not right, but if the people in this town think I’m not looking out for their best interests everything in this godforsaken place will fall apart.” People came to Carlston on the promise of Ada’s fairness, of her good treatment. The best thing she had to ensure Carlston’s growth—and that it grew the way she wanted it to—was the trust her people had for her. “I only have to speak to her, Corbley, to confirm that she has no idea what Abraham Cole is talking about. Dr. Boulos is keeping an eye on Abe, to make sure he can’t give that cute little story he told me to anyone else yet, but I have to talk to her.”

Corbley growled in the back of his throat. “If anything happens to her, it’ll cause an incident. She’s not like me, Lirimahk or someone else will be checking up on her.”

“I’m not going to let anything happen, Corbley.” Ada moved the glass to her other cheek. “We’re going to handle this, swiftly, before it gets out of control.”

“Shouldn’t someone be keeping an eye on his father?” Finnbar asked.

“Someone is,” Ada said. “Ester went out to have tea with his field manager. He’s supposed to work a full day, which gives us some time. He usually goes to the tavern, after work, and then home. Boulos has more than enough reason to keep Abe overnight.” She let out a breath, closing her eyes.

She hadn’t had to do this for quite some time. The stories of what she did to men like that, the graveyard she had allotted just for criminals, that had been enough to discourage a great deal of things like this. _Miss Carl knows, Miss Carl will find out, and when she does, God save your soul._

Corbley growled again. “Will there be a trial?”

“No.” Public spectacle was the last thing she needed. “If I find what I need to, there will be no need for one.”

“Carl.” She opened her eyes to find Finnbar gazing at her. “Do you mean to kill him?”

“The sentence for wife beaters and child abusers is the same.” She took a long swallow of water. “I’ve killed men for thievery. I’m not about to start getting soft on this.” She stood, unable to sit still any longer. “Corbley, if you will—” She stopped, staring at him.

Corbley looked back at her, no longer inclining his head slightly up to do so. “What?”

“Are you—getting taller?” She had been so busy in the past weeks, she had hardly had a chance to speak to Corbley for more than a few minutes, but now, looking at him—

Kelchak didn’t blush but Corbley might as well have, from the way his posture changed. “We’ll talk about it later, yeah?”

“I—okay.” Ada watched him go, and rubbed her face.

“You don’t want to kill Cole, do you?” Finnbar asked.

“I don’t _want_ to kill most people.” Ada set her glass down on her desk. “But I’ve set a precedent and Joseph knows it.”

“You know him well?”

Ada shook her head. “No, not well. The Coles only came here a couple years ago, after their city fell to Metzger’s army. Franklin, I think it was.” She glanced at Finnbar, and he understood what she was asking.

“I was there. It was Reyes, organized that attack.” Finnbar glanced away. “Metzger thought it was a lost cause, was ready to move on, but Reyes convinced him to make one last assault. Said the crack was already in the dam, and would only take one more push to fall. Then Franklin was ours.”

“Have you heard about Reyes, then?” Ada asked, leaning against her desk. Finnbar never talked about the war, unless she brought it up first, but if he was command, he would have known Reyes personally.

“That he was our very own Judas? Yes, I heard.” The twist to Finnbar’s voice suggested it was a thing he wasn’t likely to ever forget.

“Not that,” Ada said, “News came out a few weeks ago that Aaron Reyes has been rebaptized.”

It was like Finnbar had turned to stone. Ada wasn’t entirely certain that he was even breathing. “What?”

“He had it done in the Settlement,” Ada said. “Quite the public affair, from what I understand. The Bishop’s Men were hoping it would draw Metzger out, I’m sure. If he still lives. I hear Reyes wants to be a statesman.”

Reyes had been Metzger’s most trusted, his name just as well known. He was from a family that had turned out at least as many preachers and statesmen as it had soldiers, one that had been quick to disown him as soon as he became a known heretic. Ada didn’t know if his baptism meant they would accept him back, but if they did, Aaron Reyes would find himself once more a member of the Covenant’s wealthy and powerful. What that meant for what remained of Metzger’s heretics, God only knew.

Finnbar put a hand over his mouth, staring at some point on the wall. He looked like he might be ill.

“If you need a moment,” Ada said, but he shook his head, and stayed where he was.

Corbley returned with Hanasut, who had to stoop to get through the door. When she stood, even with her spines laid flat, her head scraped the ceiling. Ada offered her a chair, and sat down at her desk. Hanasut looked puzzled, and Ada drew in a breath. “I’m afraid,” she said, “that there have been allegations against you.”

#

The Settlement was like nothing either of them had ever seen, dense with buildings and always moving, the entire city spiraling out from the oldest structures in the colony. The train station was noisy and crowded and James didn’t like it at all, but Leah seemed like she might take flight. She pulled James after her, grinning.

“This is where we all started out,” she said, “every single person in the Covenant comes from here. Isn’t it beautiful?”

It was terrifying.

They would end up sleeping in a shanty camp under a bridge. Leah had decided their money would last longer, and they needed time to get their footing. It was dry enough in the Settlement that they wouldn’t be pressed to find more secure shelter for a few months.

She was so sure of everything. James felt like a burden on her, with all his uncertainties. He didn’t know what he would do without her.

Her first order of business was to find out how to get him into the ring.

Official rings had huge entrance fees, which they couldn’t afford to pay, and none of them wanted to take an untested fighter, especially not one so young, so they had to go for the unofficial ones, ones that had smaller prizes, were dirtier, more dangerous, and a hotbed of sins worse than gambling. Ones run by people who looked James up and down and only said, “Bit young, bit scrawny, but we’ll give him a go. Everybody likes a bit of new blood.”

He got his first fight within three days of arriving.

The ring was set up in the basement of some old building, half dug into the ground, nothing but dirt and old crate sides. “You’ll do fine,” Leah said, taking his shirt. “It’s not over until he knocks you down and you don’t get back up again.” She pulled him over, kissing the top of his head. “Fight like the Devil.”

He nodded, and turned to find his opponent dropping into the ring. He wasn’t that much older than James but the few years that he had made a difference. He was bigger, broader—better fed. The crowd liked him, called him Samson. The man who owned the ring, Mr. O’Hare, had shoved James into the ring with nothing more than “a newcomer from Janesville.”

James steeled himself. He had fought people bigger than him before, had fought them and won. All he had to do was outlast, and he and Leah would walk out five hundred units richer.

He didn’t rush into it, keeping his distance and watching the way ‘Samson’ moved. The crowd was deafening, beating the sides of the ring to strike out time. There was music, too, though he could barely hear it over the crowd.

Samson swung first and James ducked, sliding back and ducking out of the way of the next swing, too. At the third, James ducked under, and forward, bringing his fist up into Samson’s gut, once, twice, and he pulled back—his first mistake.

The moment he recovered Samson snorted like a bull and hit James square in the jaw. James staggered and tasted blood. Samson grabbed him by the shoulder and hit him in the gut three times, shoving him back in the dirt. James’ ears were ringing from the way the crowd screamed.

Samson seemed satisfied he would stay down, and turned his back on James. _His_ first mistake. James scrambled to his feet and tackled Samson from the back, toppling him. He hit whatever he could reach, until Samson threw him off. His shoulder slammed into the side of the ring and Samson clocked him across the face. James twisted and managed to break free, but that only left him spitting blood and trying to keep just out of reach.

He caught sight of Leah’s face, worried or afraid, and he was only distracted for a moment, but it was enough for Samson to knock him flat on his back.

It went on like that. Every time Samson thought James would stay down, he got back up—bleeding and shaking and just barely able to stand, he got back up, and tried to throw another punch. And the funny thing was—really, it made James laugh—every time he got up, Samson got angrier, and when James laughed in his face, Samson knocked him to the ground one last time.

The next thing he remembered was sitting on a street corner under a lamp, Leah wiping the blood off his face—which hurt a lot more than it had before. He was groggy and tasted alcohol he didn’t remember drinking.

“Your nose is broken,” Leah said, handing him his shirt, “I set it while you were out.” She looked at him, and smiled, which didn’t make any sense because, if he remembered correctly, he had just lost that fight, and they were down the thirty unit entrance fee. “Mr. O’Hare gave us a hundred units. Said that even though you lost, the crowd liked you, because you just wouldn’t quit. Says you can come back soon as you’re able to fight, and he’ll waive your fee.”

James looked at her for a long moment, and then folded, putting his head against his knees. “I’m sorry.”

Leah squeezed his shoulder. “For what? Losing? It’s your first fight, you can’t win them all. And we didn’t lose out! A hundred units is better than nothing.” When James didn’t say anything she wrapped her arms around him, chin in his hair. “I love you, Jamie.”

James pulled back, not quite able to bear being touched. “How often does Samson fight?”

Leah looked at him, surprised. “I dunno. Seems like he’s a regular. Why?”

James looked at his knuckles, raw and bloody. “I’m gonna watch him. See how he fights. And the next time I go up against him, I’m gonna win.” 

#

Carl hadn’t said a word since she went to speak to Abe Cole for a second time, alone, after they had spoken to his father. James had been told to stay put on the porch of her house, and he had, reading through a month’s backlog of news, searching for any and every mention of Aaron.

There wasn’t much more than what Carl had told him, a rebaptism, a renunciation of heresy and Metzger and everything they had fought and bled for, a full acceptance of the church’s doctrine and its right to govern the New Covenant.

Webb had come out to check on him a few times, but he was distracted, and she left him alone.

When Carl came back she only looked at him, and sat down, facing the river. James asked her if Abe’s story had changed, and she nodded, not looking at him. The sun was low in the sky, sunset just an hour or so away.

“It was his father who did it to him, wasn’t it?”

Another nod. Carl tapped her cane against the porch, fidgeting.

“What are you going to do?”

Carl got up from her chair then, leaning heavily on her cane, and went inside. A few minutes later she returned with a drink, and a pistol which she set to cleaning, staring off at the river again.

She had remarked that morning that the water was lower than it should have been, with the wet season as far away as it was. The current had become sluggish and muddy, the fish would be burrowing into the mud to wait out the last of the dry. The water tanks would all be checked weekly, anxiously monitored by a town that had faced drought before.

“Do you want me to go arrest Joseph Cole?”

Nod. She knew the gun intimately, from the way she handled it. James had never seen her carry it before.

“And what should I do with him, when I do?” There was no jailhouse, as far as he knew.

Carl put the pistol in her lap, and pointed to a row of posts along the riverbank. “You chain him to one of those.”

She picked up the pistol again, blowing down the barrel. “Best you take a few men you can trust with you. He’d have to be an even bigger fool than I think he is to not be expecting a visit from you.”

James looked at the posts, cracked and weathered. In the wet season, so close to the river, a man could drown there. “Is he going to spend the night out there?”

“Don’t feel sorry for him,” Carl said, her voice sharp and cold. “Looking at Abe… Jesus Christ I should have seen it when they first rolled into town. That sort of thing doesn’t begin overnight.” Her hands were shaking, almost imperceptibly.

“You couldn’t have known—”James began.

 _“Don’t.”_ Carl’s voice wavered, and she wouldn’t look at him. “For once, Finnbar, please just shut up.”

James stood, picking up his hat. Carl worked with her head bent, and all James could see of her was the knot of hair at the nape of her neck, the curve of one cheek. “If it’s any consolation, ma’am,” he said, “I’m relieved that you aren’t as casual about this as you would have led me to believe when we first met.”

Carl didn’t say anything, didn’t even acknowledge that she heard.

“I’ll get Cole,” James said, “and then, if that’s all, I’ll go home.”

“Do that.” Carl didn’t look up. “Get some rest, Finnbar. We have a long day tomorrow.” 

#

Cole did, in fact, know enough to expect them. Whatever Carl’s concerns had been, he went without a fight. Maybe it was only that he knew, as a few men had muttered to James over drinks, that if he tried to run, Carl would simply shoot him in the back and be done with it. She had done it before, they said. One man she had chased down in a truck, shot him, and let him bleed out on the road. Better to accept your fate, they said, than to put your family through that.

Cole’s wife was crying, saying it was a mistake, but she flinched at every glance in her direction. James apologized to her as gently as he could, saying it was out of his hands.

People looked out their windows or stood on their porches as James walked Cole to he riverbank, his hands cuffed. Carl hadn’t turned her porch light on, and in the grey light of evening there was only the silhouette of her, still and dark and watchful.

“She’s gonna kill me, isn’t she?” Cole asked.

James glanced at him. “I think you know the answer to that.”

“It ain’t right for her to interfere like this,” Cole said, “it ain’t her business what goes on in anybody’s house.”

“Just one problem with that,” James said, giving him a shove towards the nearest post. “You’re living on her land, Mr. Cole.”

“Don’t know why I’m surprised,” Cole growled. “God only knows what you did that she’s holdin’ over your head. Everybody who does her bidding like that has something. King fuckin’ Carl, probably summons up your secrets from the Devil himself.”

The chains rattled, as James pulled them down from the top, cold metal that was starting to rust. He looked at Cole. “Doesn’t matter what she does or doesn’t have on me. I saw your boy—and you’re lucky I don’t take care of this myself.” Cole had a temper but he was no fighter. Only a bully, a drunk.

Chain through the handcuffs and back up, Cole would be able to sit, but that was all. He would shiver his way through the night and Carl would deal with him in the morning.

James left him and didn’t look back, keeping his back straight, head up. Carl stood on her porch, her arms folded. There was just enough light to make out the grim set of her mouth, the movement of her eyes. He tipped his hat to her. “Evening, ma’am.”

Carl inclined her head ever so slightly. “Goodnight, Mr. Finnbar.”

James didn’t go back to the boarding house. The thought of making smalltalk with Mrs. Barnes or the other residents, or of being asked questions about Cole, turned his stomach. He meant at first only to take a long walk, but he found himself in front of the brothel, and for the first time since he had come to Carlston, he went in through the main door.

The main floor of the brothel was a wide open space, dimly lit with soft red lights. It was a lush space, carpeted and cool, music always playing, and meant—as Daisy liked to say—to be an oasis for the men of the town. Being the middle of the week, there weren’t as many men as there would be on Friday night, but it was still reasonably busy, no one acknowledging that they knew anyone else in the room.

James stepped away from the door, scanning the crowd.

Micah had seen him first, and was making his way across the room. It would have been a generous assessment to say he was half-dressed, he seemed to be wearing a sash made out of what might once have been a dark green curtain, sliding off of one hip. At some point he had acquired a necklace with thick glass beads that glimmered in the low light. Micah brought up his hands to James’ arms, looking puzzled. “Not often I see you on a weekday,” he said. Then he smiled. “But I’m glad you’re here.”

James gazed at him for a moment, marveling at his own stupidity, wondering why he thought coming here would distract him from what he wanted to forget. Wondering why he didn’t care enough to stop.

He raised a hand, touching Micah’s cheek. “Mind if I stay?”

Micah took his hands. “Long as you want.” He smiled again, pulling James after him. “Come on, Sheriff, you’ve been leaving me awfully lonely.”


	7. Dust to Dust

Ester woke to find the other side of the bed cold, no imprint on the pillow. Ada was sitting by the window, drinking coffee.

She never drank coffee.

“Have you been up all night?” Ester asked as if she didn’t already know the answer. There were too many men buried in what the townsfolk had taken to calling ‘the crook’s plot,’ and of them, Ester could count on one hand those that Ada hadn’t lost sleep over. 

It was more than most of them deserved.

“I slept a little,” Ada said, which probably meant she had stayed up reading until letters swam in front of her eyes, and fallen asleep in her chair.

Ester sat next to her at the window, taking her hand. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself.”

Ada drained her cup, and looked at the dregs with something like disgust. “If the Lord sends me to Hell for anything,” she muttered, “it won’t be for how I dress or who I fuck.”

Cut away the infected limb, save the body. That had always been the principle behind Ada’s justice. She knew too well what happened when certain evils were allowed to fester and spread, what devastation could occur when men’s power over their families was left unchecked. “You’ll work yourself to death doing this, Ada.”

Ada rubbed at her eyes. “I can think of worse reasons to die. Better ones, too.”

“I thought you hired Finnbar to take care of this sort of thing,” Ester said. “To enforce your law, wasn’t that it? He should be the one doing this.”

“The town’s not ready for that, and neither am I.” Ada squeezed her hand. “I condemned Cole, I’m the one that has to live with it.”

Days like this were never easy, for anyone. The whole town would feel it, as if Carlston itself were an extension of Ada. The tension, the unease following an execution—no one liked it. It reminded them that Ada Carl was not their friend. “It’s one thing to fool them, but you have to stop fooling yourself.”

Ada laughed softly. “I’m going downstairs.” She kissed Ester’s cheek. “I love you.”

It still amazed Ester, sometimes, how neatly Ada had built the illusion. She was so attentive to every person who came to her, it made them forget. Even Ester forgot, sometimes, how Ada carefully held those people at arm’s length.

Running this place had changed her. It had changed Ester, too, but Ada—she had always been restless. Reckless. She needed a challenge to keep her occupied, and lately, Ester suspected she had found that challenge in Finnbar. The way they pestered each other, it reminded Ester of the way Ada had used to be with her sister.

With any luck, the results would be better. 

#

James fought Samson ten times before he won. There were other fights he had better success with in the times in between, against those closer to his own size, but Samson was the goal, and it was when he fought Samson that people came to see him. They gave him the name “Lazarus,” because he wouldn’t “stay dead.”

Mr. O’Hare kept a doctor named Palmer on hand to see to his regular fighters, and James was patched up in the back of O’Hare’s office more often than not. “You’re valuable to me, boy, least I can do is make sure you can get back in the ring soon as possible.”

He threw James a few easy fights at first, and more difficult ones as James proved himself and gained an audience. His pride might have resented it, but the way Leah beamed when he came back with the money made up for whatever injuries his ego suffered.

Leah still said she was looking for work, but though she never came back with a job, she always seemed to come back with more money than she had left with. She wanted James to pretend he didn’t notice, so he did, never asking her any questions about the rouge on her cheeks or the odd hours she kept. She said she wanted him to focus on fighting, so he did. And when he wasn’t fighting he was looking for odd work, moving crates or sweeping up in bars, whatever was good for a few days of pay in between fights.

He became acquainted with how best to sniff out work, what places were best to look and which people were the best to ask. Several men who came to bet on the fights were willing to hire a fighter they liked to do odd jobs, and James was liked because he was quiet and did as he was told, so he got a fair bit of work to keep him busy and fed. The days he couldn’t find anything were the worst, spent meandering from place to place, trying not to be spotted for loitering, and looking for anything to ease his boredom that wouldn’t empty his pockets.

The eleventh time he went up against Samson, it was just over half a year since they had left Janesville. They rented a too-expensive room that wasn’t much bigger than a closet in the back of a laundry house, where they slept back to back in a bed barely big enough for one person. They were neighbors with a retired soldier who only had one eye and couldn’t seem to speak above a mumble, except when nightmares woke him shouting, a wetnurse whose room was always full of crying babies and the children of the women who worked in the laundry house, and a doctor they suspected was an abortionist.

Leah didn’t come to his fights, they couldn’t justify her spending the money to be there, not when James went nearly so often to watch the other fighters, and besides, she was ‘looking for work.’ So she wasn’t there to see it when James knocked Samson to the ground, saw him spit a tooth out. She wasn’t there to hear the way men roared when Samson finally stayed down.

She wasn’t there when, after the eleventh time he fought Samson, he met Mrs. Finnbar.

James could tell without Palmer’s aid that something wasn’t entirely right. The room was spinning around him when O’Hare shoved him into a chair, grinning from ear to ear. “Good fight,” he said, slapping James on the back and making stars swim behind his eyes. “I’ll be back with your cash in just a minute, yeah? Oh, and Palmer is out getting married, so I found someone else to look after ya until he gets back.” He jerked his thumb at a somber looking woman in her late fifties, who was giving James a critical eye, as if he were a specimen on a glass slide.

“Who’s that?” James managed to croak, but O’Hare had already left. The woman pulled up a chair and sat in front of him, opening a physician’s bag in her lap. She was dressed all in widow’s black, a wedding ring still on her finger. “You may call me Mrs. Finnbar.”

“No offense, Mrs. Finnbar, but I’d prefer a doctor.”

“None taken, Mister…?”

“James. My name is James.”

“No last name?” She had readied a damp rag to clean the blood from his face.

“None that matters.” He didn’t give his last name if he could help it, and most of the men who hired him couldn’t give less of a shit.

“Well, I take no offense, James, but you have no doctor, at this moment. You will have to settle for a doctor’s widow.” She began with a cut over his eye. “If it’s of any comfort to you, I’m quite competent.”

At the very least she had a gentler hand than Palmer, and didn’t insist on prattling on while she stitched him up. She asked a few questions about how he felt, told him what she was going to do, but otherwise didn’t feel the need to talk to him, which James appreciated, since his head had yet to stop spinning.

“Stay here,” she said as she rose to tend to the next man. “I want to take another look at you before you go. Will you stay?”

He nodded, if only because he thought if he stood the floor would be yanked out from underneath him. James didn’t know how long she was gone, but it felt like she returned only moments later, grasping his chin and peering intently at his eyes. “How do you feel?”

“Dizzy. Hurt.”

Mrs. Finnbar grimaced. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

James shook his head, and regretted it for the way his skull throbbed. “Can’t afford it.”

“Then I will pay for you,” she said diplomatically. “Can you stand?” She had gotten his shirt from O’Hare’s office and was handing it to him.

“I think so.” He glanced up at her. “Why are you doing this?”

She was peering at his eyes again. “Christ healed the sick, he didn’t leave them to risk death from untreated injury. Come on, now, I’ve a car and a driver. I’ll take you home, after.” She urged him to his feet, and it wasn’t until quite then that James realized how small of a woman she was, barely up to his chest.

Mrs. Finnbar shepherded him out to an old but well-kept car, telling her driver—an older man with a white beard—to take them to the hospital. “I’ll have to give them some last name, to admit you,” she said.

James rested his head against the window, eyes closed. He heard her huff. “I can call you James Finnbar, if that doesn’t offend your sensibilities. The staff knew my husband, they know I sometimes bring people in.”

“S’fine,” James said. He didn’t care. Mostly he wanted to go back to the room he shared with Leah, but he didn’t think he could make it on his own, and it was unlikely he could convince Mrs. Finnbar to let him go. Better just to go along with it, to see a doctor while someone else was paying for it.

“Mr. O’Hare says you’re from Janesville?”

“What’s it matter?”

“I’m going to keep you talking,” Mrs. Finnbar informed him. “So that I can be certain you’re still conscious and alert. So, Janesville?”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you come here?”

“T’get away.” He opened his eyes, which was a mistake, because the speed at which the street was passing became very quickly nauseating, and he screwed his eyes shut once more.

“Are you alone?”

“No. Sister’s here, too.”

“How old are you?”

“Be seventeen, in a month.” He wished she would let him alone.

“And your sister?”

“Eighteen.” Barely more than a year between them.

“What’s her name?”

James turned to glare at her. “What the hell do you care?” Nobody gave a shit about him or Leah, that was why they were there in the first place. Her questions were irritating, none of them mattered.

Mrs. Finnbar lifted her chin. “There’s no call for that kind of language.” She reminded James of the schoolteacher back in Janesville, an old spinster who quoted the Commandments at any opportunity.

“Jesus Christ,” James muttered, holding his head in his hands.

“Nor for that.” Mrs. Finnbar folded her hands in her lap. “You have no parents?”

“Mother’s dead. Father’s as good as.”

“I see.” There was a moment of silence before she found her next question. “Where are you living?”

He told her about the laundry house, and she pestered him with questions about what Janesville was like, how many times he had fought, and so on until they reached the hospital and he had to shield his eyes from the lights.

He didn’t remember much of the examination, except that the doctor called Mrs. Finnbar by her first name—Sarah—and James was told he wouldn’t be allowed to fight for a month or more, nor work very hard. “I have to,” he said, “I can’t afford not to.”

“Take another blow to the head like that one and you might die,” Mrs. Finnbar told him shortly. “You need time to recover.”

“I can’t ask Leah to take care of me for a month!”

“Is that your sister’s name?”

James swallowed a curse and looked away. “I need to go home,” he said, “she’s probably worried about me.”

Mrs. Finnbar nodded. “I promised I would take you home, didn’t I? Tell me where it is. I would like to speak to your sister.”

#

James had woken sometime earlier, while it was still dark, but the brightening of the window against the curtains hadn’t been enough to persuade him to leave the bed. Micah’s head was tucked against his chest, and though James couldn’t see his face, he knew Micah had been awake for some time as well.

If he left this space, this quiet moment, it allowed the world outside to become real again. It required him to wear a name that didn’t quite fit, perform a role he didn’t quite know.

Micah’s hand settled on his arm, his voice soft. “Someone will come looking for you.”

James sighed, closing his eyes. He was right. Carl would grow impatient, and when she didn’t find him at the boarding house, this would be the next place she would look.

Micah pulled himself up, kissing James until he responded. He bit at James’ bottom lip and rolled away, out of reach. “Much as I like you, nobody wants to upset Miss Carl.”

James sighed, scrubbing his face with one hand. “I suppose that’s fair.”

Micah had pulled a shirt two or three times larger than he needed over his head. He shook a hand through his hair, curls bouncing. “You can come back, you know. After.”

James pulled himself up, rolling his shoulders. “Don’t know that I’ll be very good company after something like that.”

“All the same.” Micah handed James his clothes. “It wouldn’t hurt you, to visit me more than once a week.”

“I don’t have the money to pay you.” He couldn’t quite meet Micah’s eye, whenever he remembered the nature of their relationship.

Micah scoffed. “It’s not about the money. I mean, it’s nice, believe me, but I don’t need it. Not when it’s you.” He shook out a pair of trousers. “You are as far up the food chain as it gets in this place, without being Miss Carl herself.”

That was an uncomfortable thought, and probably entirely untrue. Micah seemed to genuinely believe it, though. “Your honesty truly is… remarkable.”

“Don’t lie, it’s what you like best about me.” Micah grinned.

James smiled. “I suppose it is.”

That seemed to please Micah. He bent and kissed James again, and urged him to hurry up, before Carl sent someone to break down the door.

It was hard to tell that it was morning in the main floor, except that it was so quiet and empty. Daisy was keeping books as he came down the stairs, picking over her breakfast. “Ah, good morning, Mr. Finnbar,” she said, looking up when she heard the stairs creak. “Anything I can get for you? Cup of coffee, something to eat?”

“The time?” he asked. There were no clocks in the brothel, reminding men of the late hour might discourage them from staying to spend more money.

“Just before ten, love.” She smiled. “Miss Carl’ll be waiting.”

Waiting—she was like to be putting another bullet in her pistol just for him. He cursed and moved for the door, wondering how he was going to convince Carl not to kill him.

He made what was usually a twenty minute walk in just over ten, finding Carl already at the crook’s plot, sat in a chair with Corbley and Hanasut at her side, watching Cole dig his grave. Carl glanced at him, her annoyance evident. “I notice that’s not the direction from Mrs. Barnes’ house. You slept well, I hope.”

“Apologies, ma’am.” He glanced at Cole. “How long has he been at it?”

“About an hour. Mr. Corbley, you can return to the mine, if you want.”

Corbley nodded, muttering something to Hanasut. To James’ surprise, as Corbley left, she stayed behind.

Hanasut looked at him. _“Is this how your people handle all crimes?”_

James came to the rather sharp realization that he didn’t know the Kelchak words for ‘judge’ or ‘court.’ _“Most places have men who are paid to examine charges, to make decisions about what happens to them. Here we only have Miss Carl.”_

Hanasut seemed to understand that, and James made a mental note to ask Corbley what the right terms were at another time.

“And what human concept are we explaining today?” Carl asked, scraping a gouge in the dirt with the end of her cane.

“Frontier justice.”

Carl snorted. “I see.”

 _“She does not like me, I think,”_ Hanasut said. _“The more I learn of your language, the more that becomes clear.”_

 _“She’s that way to most everyone,”_ James assured her. _“At least when she’s being honest.”_

Hanasut mimicked a smile, though it came rather closer to a grimace.

Carl continued to fidget with her cane. “Mrs. Cole has already been here,” she said, her voice strained. “Mr. Corbley had to remove her.”

James supposed that had been a job meant for him. “Where is she now?”

“In Dr. Boulos’ office, sedated, I imagine.” She was scratching lines in the dirt, drawing a crude house. “I can hear the way you’re looking at me and I promise you she hasn’t been sedated unless she either consented or proved to be a danger to herself. But if I know Mrs. Cole, she probably consented.” Very softly, Carl said, “Joseph isn’t the only one with a taste for the drink in that house.”

Cole threw down his shovel. “You get off on this, don’t you, you fucking whore!”

Carl raised her head to look at him, but said nothing.

 _“What is happening?”_ Hanasut asked.

“Ain’t no man’d run a place like this ‘cause he wouldn’t feel the need to make up for not having a cock.” Cole was waist-deep in the ground, but he clambered up, standing on the edge of the half-dug grave. “You enjoy playin’ house, Carl? Must burn, knowing you can’t fuck Webb like a real man.”

Carl raised her chin ever so slightly, jaw tight, but still she didn’t speak or move, and her silence only seemed to further infuriate Cole.

“You think I’ve been abusing my boy? I been making him into a man, the kind you’ll never be, Carl, no matter how hard you try. God made you a woman, and it’ll take a man to beat some sense into you.”

Carl stood without any great hurry, favoring her good leg as she dropped her cane. She gazed at Cole, and with a steady hand she pulled her pistol from her belt and took aim, the wind stirring the dust.

“You’re right about one thing, Joseph,” she said. “I’ll never be a man. And thank God for that.”

Hanasut flinched at the gunshot. Cole fell back, crosswise in his grave, a spray of blood in the dust. James wondered if she had ever witnessed anything like this, or if she would go back to Kelchak territory with stories of human barbarism. Carl limped forward without her cane, standing just shy of Cole’s body. She looked back at James. “I’ll need your help, to get him laying properly.”

They laid him with his head to the north, where the marker would be, and James had to pull Carl back out of the grave. She sat in the dust, too shaky to stand, and gazed down at Cole’s body. “He won’t be the first here with a shallow grave.”

Hanasut had left, James didn’t know to where. “I can walk you back to your house,” James said.

“He needs to be buried.”

“You’re in no shape to be burying him. I’ll take care of it.” He extended a hand, to help her to her feet.

Reluctantly, she took it. 

#

Leah had been waiting for him, growing more anxious the later he was. When he stepped through the door she was bursting with questions—where had he been, who was this woman, did he win—at which point James realized he had never gotten his money from O’Hare, and was ready to turn out the door and go after it.

“Wait,” Mrs. Finnbar said, and pulled an envelope from her coat pocket. “You were in no shape to hold onto it.”

Leah snatched the envelope from Mrs. Finnbar’s hands, opening it up to count the bills. Mrs. Finnbar looked in equal measure surprised and offended, but she said nothing and turned away, looking at their rumpled clothes hung up to dry on fishing line, and the discarded evidence of food.

“Ah!” Leah whispered, relief seeping through her shoulders. “You did good, Jamie.”

“He can’t fight for a month,” Mrs. Finnbar said, and Leah’s face went ash-grey.

“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” James said, lowering himself onto the bed. He was less dizzy, now, but his head still ached.

“Contrary to your brother, I know exactly what I’m talking about.” Mrs. Finnbar turned. “He could die, otherwise.”

“I won’t be a burden on my sister,” James said.

“Would you rather be a corpse?”

“Shut up!” Leah threw the envelope down on the bed and rounded on Mrs. Finnbar, like a feral cat with her hackles up. “Who are you and why the hell should I listen to you? Huh? If James doesn’t fight we’ll be out freezing on the street again.”

Mrs. Finnbar’s expression was tightly held, and even though Leah was taller than her she didn’t seem small. “I came to offer you a solution.”

“What are you talking about?” Leah asked, her hands balled up into fists at her sides.

“Your brother said you’re looking for work.”

Had he said that? James couldn’t remember. Either way, Leah shot him a dirty look. “What’s it to you?”

“My husband left me many things, when he passed,” Mrs. Finnbar said. “A home, the money to live as I pleased. One thing he did not leave me with was heirs, someone to care for me as I grow old.” She looked at the both of them. “Stay in my house for a time, and if you prove well-mannered and of good character, I will adopt you both. Manage my house, keep my staff from robbing me blind when I’m old and senile, and you’ll find yourselves quite comfortable.”

James could see on Leah’s face that she wanted to refuse outright, to be spiteful, but she looked at him, and she  faltered. “Can we have a moment?”

The tight control of Mrs. Finnbar’s face relaxed ever so slightly. “Of course,” she said, nodding. “I’ll be just outside.”

Leah was staring at the envelope, too thin to support them both for a month. “What do you think, Jamie?” She was quiet, uncertain.

“I think it’s gotta be better than whatever you’re already doing.” James glanced away. “I think… I think it’s worth trying.”

“And when she turns us out? Leaves us like everyone else does?”

“Then we start again. At least there’ll be a little while where we don’t have to live in this room.” Hardly big enough to walk around the bed, just a single bare light. “If it works out—”

“It’s not going to.” Leah folded her arms. “She wants her charity case, fine, but she’s gonna forget how bad she feels for us, and we’re gonna be back on the street again.”

“Still, even if it’s just a few weeks, a few months…” He looked at his hands. “I’d rather be her charity case for a month than your burden.”

Leah looked at the envelope again, and then at him. “We hide this,” she said, “we save up whatever money we can while she’s taking care of us. Then, when things go south, we’ll have something to catch our fall. Alright?”

James nodded. “Sounds good.”

#

Ada had calloused her hands burying the men she killed. The first few times, the bleeding blisters she had gained felt like an earned punishment, but her hands had hardened, and it was those callouses that reminded her of her shortcomings.

When the Lord took his measure of Ada Carl, he would find her hands toughened by blood and her feet from dancing.

Finnbar walked her to the house, keeping close enough at hand that he could catch her if she stumbled, a move she was sure he thought was very subtle. Ada detoured slightly to stand on the riverbank, in the withered weeds, watching the sluggish, rust-red water. At the beginning of the dry season it ran fast and clear blue, but always toward the end it looked like this.

In Safe Harbor rust had always looked like decay, to her. It looked like the water claiming what belonged to it, like a constant battle to rebuild before the city crumbled into the sea. In Carlston, rust looked like thirst. It looked like withered crops and hungry babies.

“You perform many executions, Finnbar?”

“Enough.” He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out over the fields. “Seen more. Nearly been the subject of a few.”  He was quiet for a moment, and then, more to himself than to Ada, he muttered, “I thought it was too easy.”

Ada glanced at him. “What?”

“The way people react to you, at church and at town meeting. Looking for your approval. Some of them love you, sure, but the rest, they’re afraid of you. Or like Cole, they hate you.” He was looking at her with an expression she couldn’t read, something kin to concern but not quite.

Ada snorted. “Am I supposed to congratulate you for putting that together?”

“I’m just wondering how many of the men buried in that plot hated you.”

A lot of them. Not all, though. Some of them had liked her, she had even liked some of them back. A couple of them, she would wager, had even thought they loved her. Ada glanced up. “Why? Do you hate me, Finnbar?”

“Does it matter to you if I do?”

It shouldn’t have.

Ada looked back to the river, the sun hot on her . “Why should I care about the opinions of a man who fought on the losing side of the war? And as long as that man is getting paid to do what he’s told, why should he care what kind of men are buried in a criminal’s cemetery?”

“I suppose I don’t,” he said, “but you do.”

Ada let out a breath. “Why in God’s name are you like this, Finnbar?”

“Because I don’t hate you.” Finnbar bent to pick up a stone, tossing across the stagnant river. “I don’t trust you at all, but I don’t hate you, either.”

Ada smiled. “That’s fair enough.” The breeze picked up and she closed her eyes, breathing in a lungful of hot, dusty air. “After you bury him, you should tell Mrs. Cole and her son that it’s over.” 

#

Mrs. Finnbar lived closer to the Sanctum, her house at the base of a hill covered with the homes of statesmen and preachers. It was a huge compound, with a walled courtyard and flowering Earth trees that let out a soft, sweet scent. It was the kind of place only a family that had money since the Separation would own.

James disliked the place immediately.

The sun was coming over the horizon as her car brought them through the gates, and a houseman in a dark maroon uniform scurried forward to open the door. “Mrs. Finnbar, you were out so late, we worried—” He faltered, seeing James and Leah.

“Paul,” Mrs. Finnbar said, rising from the car, “please see that our guests have rooms prepared for them, and do tend to their needs. I shall retire for the morning, have Janet wake me around noon.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Paul said, still staring at James and his sister as they climbed out of the car, looking around. When Mrs. Finnbar turned her back, Leah made a face at Paul, and he flinched as though he feared a curse.

Their footsteps echoed inside the house. Pale blue tile that was kept spotless, Earth flowers kept in pots, a large wrought-iron crucifix on the wall facing the door. Leah reached out and grasped James’ hand, her grip tight enough to hurt.

“Are you hungry?” Paul asked. “There will be breakfast, shortly.”

Leah nodded without a word, never one to turn down food that they didn’t have to pay for. Paul led them to the dining room, which was made to host nearly twenty people. The table was covered in a crisp white cloth, the chairs polished dark wood. James was too nervous to touch anything as they sat, Paul disappearing into the kitchen.

“Do you think they’d notice if I pocketed some of the silver?” Leah murmured, and James wasn’t sure if she was trying to make a joke or not.

Mrs. Finnbar had said her husband was a doctor, but if her house was anything to judge by, he had been more than that. She was more than a doctor’s widow, at any rate.

They were served sweet breakfast rolls and sausages, with fresh blueberries and hot milk with honey. Paul hovered around watching them eat, maybe worried that they would actually pocket the silver. They ate until they couldn’t stomach anymore, and then Paul—who told them they could call him Mr. Demir—showed them upstairs, to rooms that were each twice as big as the one they had shared. “Modest quarters,” Mr. Demir said, “but on such short notice, I hope you can forgive us. Your luggage has already been brought up.”

James’ single bag looked quite pitiful sitting against the end of the bed, and putting his clothes in the dresser made the effect worse, so he put them back in his bag, and shoved it under the bed. Exhausted, he laid down on top of the blankets, staring at the ceiling, the decorative light shades. Such useless pretty things.

After a few minutes he heard the floor in the hall creak, and Leah tapped on his door, asking with a murmur if he was still awake. “Yeah. Come in.”

Leah shut the door behind her, hugged her arms across her chest. She didn’t like the house any more than he did. “It was Samson this time, wasn’t it?”

“Mhmm.”

“And you won?”

James nodded, and Leah murmured, “I wish I could have been there to see it.” She sat on the side of the bed, and then stretched out next to him. “You really think this has any chance of working out?”

“I dunno.” James glanced at her. “But you don’t say no to free food, right?”

Leah laughed a little, shaking her head. “You really gonna stay away from the ring for a month?”

“If Mrs. Finnbar’s feeding us… yeah, probably.” He closed his eyes, let out a breath. “Don’t see what we have to lose, giving this a shot. Worst is that we start over, and best… we get new names, and our future secured.”

“I don’t know,” Leah said, “the whole thing gives me the creeps.”

A quiet fell between them, and Leah turned her head. “Jamie?”

“Yeah?”

“No matter what we’re always gonna stick together. Will you promise me that?”

He grasped her hand. “Of course,” he said. “I won’t ever leave you.”


	8. In The Name Of

The Sunday service following Cole’s execution was a somber affair. Carl didn’t say much, sitting in her usual place at the front, staring off at some indeterminate point behind Pastor Richards.

Mrs. Cole and her son were absent from the service.

Their rounds had been tense in the couple of days prior, everyone avoiding the subject, and Carl seeming persistently fatigued, a weary gloom about her. When she felt the need to fill the silence it was always about something mundane—reshaping a field into pasture for the cattle they were importing, the barn they were building, Mr. McKinley wanted to know her policy on cockfighting because he apparently had a handful of promising cockerels, and what did he think about that? James told her he thought she didn’t really care about McKinley’s cockerels, and she’d given a tired laugh, rubbed at her eyes, and changed the subject. 

She claimed she hadn’t known Cole well, and maybe she hadn’t, but it was clear that having to bury him meant something to her. She had lingered in the tavern after the town meeting, drinking in the same corner where James tended to spend the church services. He had spent the better part of the night keeping an eye on her, though no one seemed in a hurry to bother either of them, and when she seemed ready to leave and he stepped to her table she gave him a tired look and said, “You keep walking me home and people are going to talk.”

“They already talk. And I’m still more afraid of Webb than I am of you.”

Walking her back to her house, Carl told him about one of the men buried in the crook’s plot. Matthew Brown. She called him Mattie. “I don’t know how old he actually was. Said he was seventeen when he first turned up but he couldn’t have been any older than fifteen, might have been younger still. I don’t know what I should have done for him, I was barely an adult, we were both trying to escape, I didn’t know what I was doing with this place yet.”

She staggered every now and then, and James steadied her with a hand on her shoulder, or at her elbow, but otherwise he kept his distance. Carl let out a breath. “I liked him right away, called him my little brother. Mattie was like… I don’t know what he came from. He didn’t like to talk about it, and I didn’t ask too much. Whatever he was running from, though, it made him… like a dog that’s been beaten since it was a pup. I was the only person he even sort of trusted, and that’s not saying much.”

Carl rubbed her face, letting out a breath. “I was willing to handle it myself when he stole from me. But it was never just me, and there was only… I don’t know, fifty or so people here at the time. A scouting camp, we hadn’t yet started to dig out the mine. And it wasn’t just the stealing, he was always high, God only knows where he was getting it. Got worse the longer he was here.”

Mattie was the loose thread that would have unraveled the entire coat. Carl told James about how it had all started to fall apart, the men’s trust in her (barely existent in the first place) deteriorating the longer Mattie ran wild. Because of him, Carlston had almost vanished before it ever appeared. She said she had tried to send him away at first, but he had no place to go, no one who would take him in.

“The last straw was a fire.” Carl was staring off into the distance, they had made it to the steps of her house but she wasn’t going inside, holding onto the rail and looking at her town. “He was… angry at me, I suppose. Because I tried to send him away. So he set fire to my tent. Only I was off drinking, I wasn’t there.” Carl glanced at James. “Ester was.”

“So what happened?”

“We lost the tent and some blankets and clothes, but nothing important. When I found out, I—” Carl went silent for a moment, her knuckles white around the handrail. “That plot of ground wasn’t a graveyard yet. I was still drunk. I was so angry I don’t think anyone could have talked sense into me, and most of them wouldn’t have wanted to. I’m sure some of them thought, finally, the girl sees sense.” She gave a bitter laugh. “I was drunk, he was high. I dragged him there by his hair, and I—” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

James watched her face. “The first time I killed a man was in the ring.”

Her eyes settled on him, with a familiar kind of exhausted. James hadn’t talked about this in years, and he found time hadn’t made it easier. “I was maybe twenty four. Fought in the kind of places where often as not you get paid in liquor. Had a name by then, a lot of money exchanging hands when I fought.” He shrugged. “Then they threw me against someone who probably should have retired. Of course, if you’re the kind of person who fights in those rings, it’s usually because you don’t have any other choice.”

James looked at her. “I’d like to tell you it was an accident. That I didn’t mean to kill him. God knows, it’s what I told everyone else. But I almost lost to him twice that fight, and I really needed that money. I had debts, I had to eat, had to pay for a doctor to put me back together at the end of the night. So when I got him down… I made sure he stayed down.”

“What happened after?”

“Ring wasn’t legal, so nobody was going to report a death. I don’t know what the people running it did with his body, but nobody ever talked about it, after. Didn’t seem like it was the first time it had happened.” He let out a breath. “Losing sleep won’t absolve you of your sins, ma’am.”

Her smile was weak. “You been talking to Ester, or do I just attract mother hens?”

He thumbed the brim of his hat. “Sleep well, Miss Carl.”

“I’ll do my best. Goodnight, Mr. Finnbar.”

The church service was subdued. Richards was giving a sermon about the life-altering power of baptism, the ultimate forgiveness of Christ, but the congregation was listless, and Richards could feel it.

Afterward, Carl sent James to the brothel alone. “I have business to take care of in Mallory, Mr. Corbley is driving me. You know what you’re doing, just listen to what they have to say.” She wasn’t exactly cheerful, but she seemed to have slept, which made James feel a little better.

“I don’t have the head for gossip and rumor that you do,” he told her.

“Well, now that’s a damn lie,” Carl said. “Take notes if you have to. On paper, mind.” She had straightened her hat and sent him on his way, as if it were just like any other Sunday.

“Just you today, Mr. Finnbar?” Daisy asked when he arrived. “Heaven only knows what kind of trouble you could get up to.” 

#

Ada had her feet up on the dashboard, mostly because she knew it annoyed Corbley.

“I ought to make ya drive this damned thing,” he muttered, arm hanging out the window. “S’built for your kind, anyway.”

“I hate driving,” Ada said, as if he didn’t know that. She fiddled with the buttons on her cuffs. “We haven’t gotten to talk about… this thing.”

Corbley’s upper eyes rolled in her direction, the lower, larger pair staying trained on the road. “What thing?”

“The fact that you’re as tall or taller than me now. I’ve known you for what, over seven years now? And you’ve always been shorter than me.” Ada looked askance at him. “I’ve heard that Kelchak can… change certain things about their body, in a way that humans can’t. That you can just—wake up one day and start the process.”

Corbley snorted. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?” Ada shifted, bringing her feet to the floor. “You’re… changing.”

Corbley didn’t answer her at first, watching the road. “Lirimahk coming here reminded me of a lot of things I wanted t’forget. I need a fresh start, is all.”

Ada glanced out the window, at the fields and trees. “So when do I have to start calling you Miss Corbley?”

Corbley made a derisive sound at the back of his throat. “Don’t. The Kelchak word for what I’m gonna be don’t translate over that nicely.”

“What is the word, then?”

“Qorilaq. It’s sort of a… halfway point, between Anipir and Alilaq. Not that that means anything t’you.”

“What does it mean to be… that?” Ada hated that she didn’t know as much about Kelchak customs as Finnbar did. Hated that in seven years, she hadn’t even thought to ask.

“I’ll be taller,” Corbley said. “Not as tall as Hanasut, likely, but a fair bit taller’n you. If I were with other Kelchak, it’d mark me out as sort of… set apart, I guess you’d say. Rejecting involvement in nesting.”

“And… Alilaq is what Lirimahk is, right?” Ada racked her brain, trying to remember the conversation at that awful dinner, just after Lirimahk had turned up and put a gun to Finnbar’s head. She was still angry about that. “It means, um—a mature female who hasn’t yet nested. And Anipir is what you are now.”

“Yeah, you’ve got it right.”

“Does Hanasut factor into this, somehow?” She hadn’t seen as much of Corbley recently, and it bothered her. She felt like she was making a stranger out of him.

Corbley shrugged. “She’ll help me through a few things… mostly, it’s nice to speak my own language again.” He glanced at Ada. “You’re feelin’ bad and I don’t know what about.”

Ada took her feet off the dash. “I’ve been a shit friend.”

“Have you?”

The truck hit a bump in the road and Ada winced. “I’ve never asked you anything about the Kelchak. Seven years and I don’t know a damn thing.”

“That’s what this is about?” Corbley looked surprised. “You ain’t curious about anybody except what you need to keep ‘em in line. Figured it was part of your whole ‘I don’t care what ya did or who ya were’ thing, seeing as I was the only one who got that privilege.”

“Is that… really how I come off?”

“For seven years that’s who I’ve known ya to be.” They were coming up on the trees now, almost to the border between Carlston and Mallory. “You asked Finnbar who he is, yet?”

Ada let out a sigh, and Corbley snorted. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“Plausible deniability.”

“Sure, I suppose there’s some as might be stupid enough to take that answer from you.” Corbley picked at something in his teeth. “Still think you could be better prepared for trouble if you knew for sure.”

“This isn’t about Finnbar,” Ada said, “this is about me not knowing a goddamn thing about the—what, sixty some odd years you lived before you came to Carlston?”

“Ain’t nothin’ to tell.”

“That’s not true and don’t insult me by pretending it is.” Ada tried to press again. “You said I’m not curious about anybody, so I’m being curious. Were you born in the Kelchak colony, or did you come from… ah, I forget the name of the planet.”

“Unda. Just means ‘home.’” Corbley sighed. “I was born on Unda, yeah.”

The air changed under the trees, cooler and with the faintest promise of water. “What were your parents like?”

“Sire was alright. Was an archivist, before he took up with my mother. Quiet sort, bit stern. There were five of us, in my nest. Sire saw us all schooled and brought up proper. Didn’t even meet my mother ‘til I was nearly grown. She was a pilot, see… ‘magine she’s retired, by now, but then, if anybody was gonna keep flying until she died, I s’pose it’d be her.” Corbley laughed. “Now her, you’d’ve liked her. Didn’t take no lip from anybody, would never settle for being second-best. Pushed all of us to be the best we could be, even me.”

Ada caught on that last sentence. “What d’you mean, ‘even you’?”

Corbley didn’t answer her at first, fingers tight around the wheel. “I guess,” he sighed, “it’s good a time as any to tell you why I’m here in the first place.”

#

“I’m going to forget half of what I just heard,” James muttered, throwing his hat onto a chair and sinking onto Micah’s bed. He rubbed his face as Micah settled on the bed next to him, a pillow shoved under his chest and propped up on his elbows. “And I doubt I heard even a third of what they would have told Carl.”

“She wouldn’t have left the job to you if she thought she was going to lose anything important.” Micah put his cheek in his hand, looking at James. “I haven’t seen you since they put Cole in the ground.”

James turned his head. “Since I and Carl put him in the ground, you mean.”

Micah brushed his fingers over James’ hair. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine.”

“I’d be less offended by the lie if it weren’t such a lazy one.” Micah’s hand came to rest on James’ chest. “Either you’re not fine or I’ve got to think you just don’t want to talk to me, which can’t be true, because I think we talk more than we do anything else.” Micah thumbed at the topmost button his shirt. “Or aren’t I allowed to be worried about you?”

 _Worried._ James couldn’t imagine Micah being worried about him. It was difficult to conceive of Micah even thinking about him when he wasn’t there. It wasn’t as if they were… sweethearts or partners or whatever the right word was. Micah worked in a brothel, it wasn’t as if James was the only man he brought to this room. Micah had said himself, the reason their relationship was valuable was because of James’ status, that was all.

“You can do whatever you want,” James said, which was apparently the wrong thing to say.

Micah frowned, sitting up. He tossed the pillow aside and leaned across James, to make him stay put. Micah’s voice shifted, not quite as soft and amiable as it usually was. “Some men, when they have a favorite, it’s because they like a particular look. This kind of hair, that kind of face, long legs, fat legs, whatever kind of ass they most like to grab. You act a certain way with those men. Other men, they have a favorite because what they want is someone to talk to, someone who will get to know them, someone who will be everything a wife would be to them, at their convenience.”

Micah looked at him, searching his face. “Which favorite do you come here to see, James?”

“I’m not looking for a wife,” James said softly, “but I don’t just come here for your pretty face, either.”

“That’s not terribly helpful,” Micah said.

“I know.” James brought a hand to Micah’s face, rubbing his cheek with a thumb. “I’m sorry.”

Micah laughed. “Don’t say you’re sorry. I just want to know if you’re alright.”

James smiled a little. “I’ve been better. Been a lot worse, too. Suppose it averages out somewhere along the line.”

It wasn’t an answer, and Micah knew it, but he kissed James, which he supposed meant that was the end of it, for now. 

#

“Now that we’re done talkin’ about me,” Corbley said, turning into the main street of Mallory, “I haven’t had the chance to ask you what your father’s been up to, lately.”

Ada had been wondering about that, herself. “He’s been suspiciously quiet,” she said. “I haven’t had a nosy message or call from him or Mother in about a month. It’s… worrisome.”

“Think he’s up to something?”

“He’s always up to something.” She tapped her fingers on the door. She was always a little resentful of how much more _put together_ Mallory looked. She knew it was because Mallory was an older town, nearly thirty years old, and Carlston had gotten its first proper non-residential buildings barely five years before, but she resented it all the same. Mallory right there, and it looked respectable, while Carlston still looked half-wild.

It wasn’t even that she wanted Carlston to seem more respectable. She compared the feeling to the way women at church would look at her in Safe Harbor, when she came in with mud on the hem of her dress. She just didn’t like being judged for it.

“The question is, what is it this time.” Ada glanced at Corbley. “You know the curious thing is that Jacobsen must have reported back about Finnbar, but Mother hasn’t asked about him at all.”

Corbley glanced back. _“Your_ mother ain’t asked about a man you’re spending most of your time with?”

“I know, it’s…” Ada put her fingers to her mouth. “King of Clubs.”

“The hell are you on about now?”

“Ester’s readings, she—the King of Clubs has been coming up over and over again since Finnbar showed up.” Ada shook her head. She’d been trying to make sense of it for weeks. Some of Ester’s readings were clear, they insisted on partnership, warned of enemies or adversity, but others… others didn’t make any sense to her at all. A Three of Hearts for a granted wish. A Jack of Diamonds for good news. They were like parts of a bigger picture she couldn’t make out.

Corbley shook his head. “Baffles me that you’d let her tell you what to make of the world using the same thing that has every fool in town emptying their pockets after payday.”

“That isn’t how it works, and you know it.” Ada closed her eyes. “Where are we going first?”

“Train station, pick up the mail. What was it you wanted t’do again?”

“I’m going to pay a visit to Mr. Hansen and his family,” Ada said. “They’ll know more than I do about what’s going on in the Settlement, lately.”

Corbley made a whistling sound through his teeth. “And what exactly’s got your eye on politics?”

Ada glanced out the window at the storefronts, the nice tame streets of Mallory. “I want to know what Aaron Reyes is up to.” 

#

Life in Sarah Finnbar’s house was oddly quiet, compared to the city outside. With the exception of when her ‘charity work’ kept her out late, Mrs. Finnbar kept regular hours, with the predictability of a clock. James became well acquainted with her schedule, because it was her expectation that he and Leah would keep those hours, as well.

Her staff roused them for breakfast every morning, where they were expected to be presentable and ready to converse. (Mrs. Finnbar’s first mission had been in purchasing new clothes for the both of them, calling upon a seamstress and tailor who apparently knew her well, and regarded James and Leah with the same kind of awkward suspicion that Demir gave them.)

After eating, Mrs. Finnbar would go for a walk around her garden, which the pair of them were expected to accompany her on, because “fresh air does the soul good.” She spoke a lot about her flowers, about the care they needed to flourish, and Leah would glance over her head at James and roll her eyes.

Within a week of their arrival, Mrs. Finnbar was looking for tutors. “You can read and write, and for that I’m glad, but you’ll need more than that if you wish to make anything of yourself.”

Leah proved a terror to all the tutors Mrs. Finnbar tried to hire. She spoke rudely to them, challenged them at every turn, and when one grew frustrated and slapped her, Leah chased him from the house wielding a lamp.

Certain that Mrs. Finnbar would throw her out when she returned, Leah had run up to her room to take her things and leave—and Mr. Demir had locked her inside.

Mrs. Finnbar returned to find James halfway up a tree trying to help Leah climb out her window. Just what she said or did to Demir, neither James or Leah knew, but he avoided them after that, and Mrs. Finnbar gave Leah a new room, to which only she had the key.

About the tutor, all she said was, “If a grown man cannot handle an eighteen year old girl without striking her, then I don’t want him teaching you, anyway.”

Leah was a little less hostile, after that.

James started going to fights again, after a month had passed. Mr. O’Hare seemed relieved to have him back, and for a brief time even gave him his pick of the fights. “When I heard Widow Finnbar picked you up I thought for sure I’d lost ya,” he said. “But I’m glad to have you back, boy.”

Mrs. Finnbar was considerably less pleased. “I don’t approve,” she said. “I won’t try to stop you, because if you’re anything like your sister, it will only encourage you to be more sly, and I would prefer to know where you’re at, and when.”

So he fought, and he made money, and more than a couple of time he turned up at breakfast with a black eye and a recently broken nose. Mrs. Finnbar treated any cuts over a sink, washing blood off his face. “My neighbors undoubtedly think I’m hosting a vagrant, if they’ve seen you coming back in the mornings.”

It made him popular with the children of her friends, when she had decided he and Leah needed to be introduced to them. For most of them, he was apparently the only fighter they knew, and it didn’t matter to them that the place he fought was a seedy little hole that made their parents look askance at him.

He was happy to indulge them for a while, but Leah didn’t trust it. “We’re freaks to them,” she muttered. “Poor little church mice that Widow Finnbar took in. They don’t really think we _belong.”_

James wanted her to be wrong, but there were the little things. The comments about how he and Leah spoke, the teasing when there was a slip in their table manners, questions about how many drunks there were in their family.

They didn’t belong, and Leah wanted to leave, and James wanted to stay out of spite.

Mrs. Finnbar, through it all, was a rock in the stormy sea. Her support, her encouragement—James didn’t realize, at the time, how much he relied on it. Even Leah softened, eventually. She wouldn’t admit it, but James could sense the change in her, the measure of respect she gave their benefactor.

They went to church with her, on Sundays and on Wednesday nights, when Mrs. Finnbar did nurse work in the church hospital. She put James and Leah to work cleaning, mostly. She said that service was true Christian work, and no ward of hers would benefit from her care without repaying their debt to those who needed it.

She was such a pillar of his life, such a present force of principle and ethic, that it wouldn’t be until years later, long after the last time he had seen Sarah Finnbar’s face, that James would realize he didn’t know a damn thing about her.

#

“Where are you from?” Micah sat with his legs across James’ lap, leaning up against the headboard. “I just realized I don’t know what you were before you came here.”

“I think you might have a guess,” James answered, the ghost of Micah’s fingertips still on his brand. Micah traced the shape of it sometimes, never asking, but the touch was question enough.

Micah reached over to tug lightly on his ear. “That’s not what I mean. Before the war.”

Was there anything before the war? James felt as if the war had started when he was born. As if he had never known anything but the war. “I grew up in an orchard town, not far from the Settlement,” he said. “I fought. Worked a lot of odd jobs. Built houses for a while, until I was fired. Not long after that the war started.” He looked at Micah. “What about you?”

Micah laughed, looked at the ceiling. “I’m from Chapel. Church city. There’s a factory there, that’s where most of the ore from this place gets processed. It’s grim and grey and the sun never shines and nobody ever smiles.” He shrugged, shook his head. “Leona tells me it’s always grey here during the wet season, but it’s been so sunny since I arrived… thank God.” He smiled, and then, “Are you going to ask me how I ended up in this line of work?”

“I thought that might be rude.”

Micah burst into such a fit of giggles it took him a minute to get a sentence out. “You’re afraid of offending me?” He looked almost charmed. “There’s not many that would be worried about being rude to a someone like me.” Micah shifted, bringing his knees against James’ middle. “Do you want to hear about it?”

James leaned over, his forehead against Micah’s. “I want to know anything you’ll tell me.”

Micah smiled, kissed his cheek. “I was born in a brothel.” He sat back, shrugging his shoulders. “Mam didn’t have any family that could or would take me in, so I grew up with the other brothel babies. Slept in the back, everybody took turns taking care of us.”

It was almost odd, how matter-of-fact Micah was. How he could just say that he had been born in a brothel, when James had spent so many years barely able to say that his father was a drunk. Micah seemed—so above shame, in a way James couldn’t fathom.

“I don’t know if any of us really thought we were ever going to be anything other than what our mothers were. Mam wanted me to go to school, but the good church folk didn’t want me and the others in the same schoolhouse as their children. I think most all that didn’t stay just became thieves.”

“Did you ever want to be anything else?” He must have, no one dreamed of growing up to do this.

Micah shrugged. “Dancer, I suppose, but where would I dance that wasn’t a brothel or a tavern, anyway? Suppose I always envied the socialites,” he smiled a little, remembering. “I wanted to throw big parties. If I actually was one, though, I’d have to wear some stiff black suit. It’s the women who get to have fun and wear the glitz. So probably I’m better off as I am.”

He was so… unsinkable.

Micah grinned. “What are you looking so morose for?”

“Ah, it’s nothing, just—” He looked at Micah with something close to disbelief. “You’re just so… content.”

“Mam said it didn’t do any good to hold onto what could’ve been, and I suppose we’re both like that. Since no church would have us I suppose I didn’t ever learn to feel ashamed. Mam wouldn’t have let me. Said we did what we had to do to get by and there wasn’t any sense in being ashamed of that.”

He waved a hand in the air. “Besides, you’ve only known me since I got here. Miserable up in Chapel, but here? Here I can actually live.” He leaned over, tracing a bullet scar on James’ shoulder. “Place like this travels through all kinds of rumor mills fast. Money to be had, and better, the landowner herself sees you treated well. Who wouldn’t try for a fresh start in a place like that?”

James couldn’t argue with that. “And your mother?”

Micah laughed again. “Mam married a factory worker. It happens, sometimes. He didn’t want me and I didn’t like him much, so it didn’t make any difference that I left. I figure we’re both happier, now.”

There was quiet, for a moment. James had a hand on Micah’s legs and he had to think, to decide how much of a fool he wanted to be in that moment. “There’s something I want to tell you,” he said, his voice soft. “But first I have to know that you won’t tell it to anyone else, except Carl, and even then only if she asks.”

The shift in Micah was obvious. He sat up a little straighter, his gaze a little more alert. “Of course,” he said, without the slightest hesitation. “What is it?”

A voice that sounded an awful lot like Aaron’s whispered that it was stupid to do this, that he was taking a massive risk and all because he couldn’t help his fool heart, weak for the slightest expression of affection—but James pushed the voice aside, and met Micah’s eyes. “I want to tell you my name.” 

#

“I see you brought the lizard,” Mr. Hansen said with a grimace as Ada stepped onto his front porch.

“Strictly speaking, Mr. Corbley brought me. He’s off to pick up a few things, he’ll be back to pick me up in an hour or so.” Ada took off her hat. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me today, Mr. Hansen.”

Hansen sighed. “Of course, Miss Carl. Carlston ore does bring so much business to Mallory…” He sounded a bit like he hated her for it. Hansen was seventy-five if he was a day and he had never, ever greeted Ada with anything warmer than cool disdain. He made sure to keep his grandchildren well away from her, apparently fearing the bad influence of them breathing the same air as her. “Please, do come inside,” he said. “I’ve had Louise make lemonade.”

The air inside Hansen’s house, on the few occasions Ada had visited, always felt stuffy and tomb-like, and it was only made worse by the fact that the lights were too bright. Hansen brought her to the sitting room, and settled into the same old, narrow green chair that Ada thought might be as old as the Covenant itself. “You said in your message that you wished to discuss the Sanctum?” He regarded her with suspicion, as if believing she had some dastardly plan to corrupt the government.

“News is slow in coming to Carlston,” she said, perching on the edge of the divan. “I hoped, that with your son being a statesman, you might know more than I do.”

“You understand that David does not give me… sensitive information.”

“Of course not, that’s not what I’m asking about, Mr. Hansen.” She accepted a glass of lemonade from the maid who quickly bowed out, quiet as a whisper. “I came to ask if there was any news about the heretics.”

Hansen studied her for a moment, and reached for the cigarette case in his pocket. He took his time in lighting it, the sickly smell of ara leaves already deeply embedded in the room. “What makes you ask about them?”

“Same reason anyone would ask,” Ada said, “can’t think of much else more important right now. Do they have any idea where Metzger got to, yet?”

“The last I heard, some believed he sought asylum with the lizards.” Hansen was watching her, watery eyes unblinking. “The heretics did quite a bit of business with them, I understand the lizards were sympathetic to their cause. Makes sense, I suppose, for a godless species.”

Ada smiled thinly, knowing she was being baited, and refusing to rise to it. “Has anyone investigated this?”

“The lizards are uncooperative.” Hansen lifted his glass, taking a long drink. “It would not surprise me in the slightest to find out they were sheltering Metzger and a dozen other heretics.”

“And what about Aaron Reyes?” Ada took a sip of lemonade, and discovered it was mostly water, and didn’t have near enough sugar. “Has the prodigal son been welcomed by his family?”

Hansen snorted. “Reyes… I met him once, as a boy. The serpent of Eden had less guile. As for his family, I have no idea, but Reyes himself has been quite busy making good with the church.”

“How so?” Ada asked. “I know he’s already been rebaptized, but—”

“Oh, he’s done a sight more than that.” Hansen blew smoke through his nostrils. “Reyes has said that if Metzger doesn’t come forward to seek the church’s forgiveness, Reyes will go find him, and bring him back to face justice.” 

#

Leah was sneaking out at night.

She left by the back way, behind the staff’s rooms, and was back again in the wee hours of the morning.

James didn’t know how to ask her about it, or why she was doing it, so he didn’t. He pretended not to notice how she was always tired. He didn’t ask why Leah’s suitcase was always packed, or why it had a new lining.

He didn’t think Mrs. Finnbar knew. She was tolerant of many things, but of this—James couldn’t imagine she would let it go on, if she knew, and James wasn’t going to tell her.

He didn’t know why Leah was doing it. Things were going well for them, or so it seemed to him. Leah had even admitted to liking their tutor, Mr. Teller, an older man who she pestered constantly, purposefully being difficult.

They had been living with Mrs. Finnbar for nearly a year, all her social circle knew them. A few times, when James had gone to visit those he supposed he could call his own acquaintances, he had heard someone say, “The Finnbar boy is here,” and he couldn’t quite explain how relieved he was to hear it.

But Leah was still convinced that it was all bound to fall apart sooner, rather than later, and if it wasn’t going to happen on it’s own, then Leah was going to make it happen.

Then, there was Miriam Hall.

Miriam was the daughter of one of Mrs. Finnbar’s friends, twenty two with red hair and the brightest hazel eyes. She was engaged to an officer of the Bishop’s Men, but he was stationed along the border with Kelchak territory, and she hadn’t seen him in nearly a year. He had a promising career ahead of him, according to all his superiors. He might even be a general, someday.

She told this all to James when they were in her bed.

Miriam was one of the few people he had come to know in Mrs. Finnbar’s circle who didn’t remind him at every moment of his past, didn’t treat him and Leah as a moment’s amusement. Even Leah had to admit that she liked Miriam, if for no other reason than that Miriam never made her feel scorned or pitied. So when she had taken an interest in James, he had eagerly chased after her affection, some feral hunger he had managed to keep quiet for years now gnawing at his ribs.

And the more he fed that hunger on Miriam’s attention, the more deeply a bleak sense of unhappiness settled into his limbs.

Leah found him in Mrs. Finnbar’s garden one afternoon, the book he was supposed to be reading open in his lap, while he stared listlessly at the orange trees. “Is that another one of those awful history books Teller keeps handing you?” Leah asked, leaning over his shoulder.

“They’re really not that bad,” James said, half-heartedly.

“They’re so boring,” Leah said, resting her forearms across the back of his shoulders. “And you haven’t shut up about pre-Separation politics or whatever in weeks.” She dropped her voice in a teasing imitation of him. _“Lee, listen, the church was never supposed to be in charge. There wasn’t even a priest here until the second round of settlement. Lee, Lee, after the Separation—”_

James shoved her off, snapping the book shut. Leah went quiet for a moment, and then came around the other side of the bench he was sitting on, her hands on her hips. “And what’s got you acting sour as curdled milk?”

When James didn’t answer, she said, “This wouldn’t have anything to do with Miss Miriam Hall, would it?”

James didn’t ask how she knew, and apparently his continued silence was answer enough. She lowered her voice, in case one of Mrs. Finnbar’s gardeners was out. “I don’t understand why you’re fooling around with her. Not because of her fiance or anything, but… Jamie… you’ve been making eyes at the back of Luke Tailor’s head for months. He smiles at you and you melt like butter under the sun.”

Of course she noticed. Leah had an eye for things like that, it made her an accomplished gossip, which had ingratiated her with Mrs. Finnbar’s staff.

James looked at the sky, clear and blue and empty of even the faintest clouds. “I don’t know what to do, Lee.” Did adultery lessen the sting of his other sins?

Leah poked him in the middle of the forehead. “First things first, you stop messin’ around with a girl who’s engaged to somebody else. Only misery’ll come of that. And as for the other,” Leah sat next to him, looped her arm through his. “You are what you are, and no amount’a guilt is gonna change that. Nobody’s gotta explain themselves to anybody but God.”

“Lee—”

“I’d fight the Devil himself for you, you know that?” Leah grasped his hand, smiled. “Nobody can hurt either of us, long as we’ve got each other.”

“Leah, how am I supposed to live the rest of my life?” He stared at her. “People like me… they don’t… we don’t—”

“Jamie,” she gripped his hand. “You do it one day to the next—and there won’t be nothing you can’t do.”

One day to the next.

He didn’t stop seeing Miriam, not at first, but she must have been able to tell that he was unhappy, or else she had gotten bored with him, because her sly invitations to slip away started to become less common, and eventually stopped altogether.

Mrs. Finnbar seemed to notice that he was more somber, but her questions didn’t come anywhere near the truth, and thus were easy to get around.

The last day he would spend in Mrs. Finnbar’s house started like any other. Sunday breakfast was quiet, unremarkable. The sermon that morning was about the grace of the martyr, he who was willing to die for his conviction in his faith, his love of God. Leah muttered something about ‘following the steps of Jesus right onto the cross and into the grave,’ and Mrs. Finnbar shushed her.

He had no reason to think that the walk home would be any more significant than any other walk.

The only thing that was different about their route home that day was the street corner preacher. The Settlement was rife with them, men who had studied theology but couldn’t find a church to support them, and around the Sanctum especially. This particular preacher, a man of about thirty, James had seen several times in other parts of the city. His preferred sermon topic was all the temptations of the flesh, and how best to combat sin.

Mrs. Finnbar put a hand on James’ arm. “We should go around this man. Catch up with your sister and tell her we’re crossing the street.”

Leah had gone ahead because she was annoyed with being hushed, and without having to slow her pace for Mrs. Finnbar’s smaller strides, she had gotten quite a way ahead of them. James had just started to catch up with her, when the street preacher noticed Leah—

—and recognized her.

“And behold here,” he bellowed, walking to meet Leah and catching her by the arm, in front of all his onlookers. “One of Satan’s own whores!”

Leah startled and tried to pull away, and James didn’t remember starting to run but he remembered with perfect clarity the surprise on the street preacher’s face when James grabbed him and threw a fist into his face. Blood gushed from the preacher’s nose and when James would later recall the event, what he would remember most was the white hot fury and how it burned through his blood, the breaking open of something that for years he had tried to keep smothered.

He would be told that Leah had tried to pull him away, but she wasn’t a fighter, and James had the single-minded focus of beating a man’s blood into the stone.

The only thing he registered outside of that was the blow to the side of his head that knocked him over sideways. Before he could get his bearings he was face down on the ground, a Bishop’s Man pinning his arms against his back. The soldier was yelling something at him, but what James saw was Mrs. Finnbar, just down the street, with Leah. Leah was shaking, too overwhelmed to do anything, and Mrs. Finnbar was watching James, apprehensive. There were other Bishop’s Men, helping the hurt preacher. No one was looking at the women.

Someone kicked him. “The hell is your name, boy?”

For nearly a year, he’d been James Finnbar. All he’d had to do to wear that name, a name that wasn’t his, was accept the kindness that was offered him. Kindness he hadn’t asked for and didn’t deserve.

If he was going to tarnish a name, it might as well be his father’s.

“My name is John,” he said, “John James Metzger.”


	9. Childish Things

Aaron Reyes was many things, but he was not a fool.

It was not a decision he made lightly, to announce to the world that he mean to find James, and bring him to justice. Sooner or later, James would hear about it, and by the time Aaron found him, he would likely be ready for it. He wasn’t going to go anywhere without a fight.

Aaron supposed James had more than a few reasons to take things personally. He was, unfortunately, sentimental like that. 

So, there was the matter of selecting a group to make the journey with him. They were Bishop’s Men, all. Respected soldiers whose loyalty to the church had never been under question; they were there as much to keep an eye on Aaron as to be of use if—when—they found James. There would be no diversion or wasting time, so long as Aaron had to be shadowed by the Bishop’s Men in their black uniforms.

Following that, there was the elimination of absurd rumors.

He found himself spending a hot Thursday afternoon in the dusty anteroom of a church, with Levi Stark, the officer who would be leading his little troupe of Bishop’s Men. They were of an age, he and Stark, both in their early forties, and it was exactly there that their similarities ended. Stark was stern and dull and had every ounce the political finesse of a brick. He was good for following orders, and that was about all.

Stark was at that moment looking through files, updating Aaron on what ‘information’ about James’ whereabouts the church possessed, if it could even be called that. Nothing but rumors and wild theories based on nonsense. “We have word that Metzger may have sought refuge with the Kelchak.”

Aaron made no attempt to keep the disdain from his voice. “Oh, surely, if he wanted to commit suicide, he might have. Where better to go than the one place he’d stand out most?”

How they thought a man who had warred with the church for six years and harried and evaded them for even longer could be stupid enough to attempt to hide among Kelchak was beyond Aaron. 

“It was thought, since the Kelchak are sympathetic to heretics–”

“They were sympathetic to heretical trade, nothing more. Weapons in exchange for plants that Earth-borns won’t sell them. Beyond that they disdain all Covenanters equally.” 

“Where would you place him, then?” 

Aaron would have liked to carve that bored look off of Stark’s face with a hunting knife. Instead, he only fidgeted with his cigarettes, because he wasn’t permitted to smoke in the church. “Metzger is at heart a dependent. Can’t bear to be alone. If we mean to find him, we have to start with the people who might be willing to hide him.”

Stark glanced at him. “Heretics?”

“You’re not thinking sentimentally enough.” He put the cigarette case back in his pocket, and brushed dust from his sleeve, hating that he had been consigned to storage rooms and creaking doors. “We’ll start with his family.” 

#

“Oh, Miss Carl,” Mrs. Barnes said as Ada stepped through the door, “I was just setting dinner, I wasn’t expecting you—”

“I’ve already eaten, Mrs. Barnes, please don’t worry yourself over me.” Ada glanced around the dining room, at the men who lived in the Barnes’ house. “Is Mr. Finnbar not here?”

“No, Miss, I’ve not seen him this evening. He’s, ah, visiting someone I think—”

From the table, a man Ada was fairly certain was new to town said, “He’s at the brothel, I imagine. Not much else he goes in that direction for.”

“Mr. Howell,” Mrs. Barnes scolded, “I’ll not have such talk in my dining room.”

“Thank you, Mr. Howell,” Ada said, glad she didn’t have to ask for his name. “Mrs. Barnes, when you next see Mr. Finnbar if you could tell him I would like him to meet me, at his earliest convenience. I have some things I would like to discuss with him.”

“Yes, of course,” Mrs. Barnes said. “Can I offer you anything else, Miss Carl?”

“No, thank you.” Carl glanced down the table. “I’m afraid I don’t yet know you, Mr. Howell. Where do you work?”

“Building crew, ma’am, I do electrical work.” Howell smiled politely at her. “I’ve seen you at town meeting, but hadn’t introduced myself.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for you, next time.” Ada smiled, the same smile she gave all the men. Pretty. Cold.

“Are you sure you won’t stay, Miss Carl?” Mrs. Barnes asked. “I can set out another plate.”

“Oh, no, thank you,” Ada said. “I was only going to stop by for a moment.” She nodded at the table, noting that Mr. Barnes’ seat was empty. “Evening, gentlemen. I do hope I’ll be seeing you all at the meeting this Saturday.”

There was some mumbled agreement, and Ada let herself out the door, setting her hat back on her head.

Corbley had only asked her one question after she told him what Hansen had told her. “Are you going to tell Finnbar?”

Telling him would, if anything, let him know exactly what she suspected, if he didn’t already. What was to be gained by telling him? She had seen the way he reacted just to hearing Reyes’ name again.

There was still a chance she was wrong. A slim chance, that went against everything she knew in her gut.

When she told Ester about it, Ester had considered it all in silence, and only said, “Then we must prepare for the possibility that he is found.”

“Miss Carl.”

Distracted from her thoughts, Ada jumped, not knowing when Hanasut had snuck up on her. “Jesus!” Then, “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.” Ada glanced around. “Where’s Corbley?”

Hanasut still struggled with human names, Corbley’s especially, but she managed. “Mr. Corbley went to the tavern. He said you would be on your way there, soon. To collect a Mr.—”

“Barnes,” Ada said. Corbley must have spotted him already. “Yes, I suppose I am. Are you coming along, then?  Wouldn’t hurt to have you looming over my shoulder.”

Hanasut cocked her head to the side, and almost smiled. “Mr. Corbley said you would say that.”

“He knows me well,” Ada said. She kicked a stone out of the way, and started off toward the tavern. “Do your people have gambling, Dr. Hanasut?”

“We use what you might call dice,” Hanasut said, her ‘s’ sounds hissing through her teeth. “Cards… do not lend themselves to Kelchak hands.”

“And do you have those who bankrupt their families for their vice?”

“Some. But those,” Hanasut murmured, “do not have families for long.”

The tavern was packed, but Hanasut was hard to miss, and people moved out of the way for the pair of them. Had Ada come on her own, people might have stopped to talk to her, but with Hanasut, it was apparent she was there for a reason, and the memory of Joseph Cole was too sharp for anyone to get in her way.

Henry Barnes was sat at a table with his back to her, cards held close, but Ada could see as she approached that he had a bad hand. Judging from the cash on the table, it wasn’t his first bad hand that evening.

“Mr. Barnes,” Ada said, grasping the back of his chair. Barnes jumped, looking up at her guiltily. What Ada wouldn’t give for grown men to stop looking at her like children caught with their hands in the candy tin. She wasn’t their mother. “I was just at your house,” Ada said. “Your wife was putting dinner on the table.”

“Is it that late already?” Barnes asked, as if he didn’t know the time. The others at the table were shifting uneasily, glancing between Ada and Hanasut.

“Best go home, Mr. Barnes,” Ada said, “I would hate for you to miss dinner.” She stepped back to allow him to leave, and cast a cold look at the other men at the table, who avoided her gaze.

“That was… less than I expected,” Hanasut said as Ada turned toward the bar.

“If I shot every man who made me unhappy I’d have no town,” Ada replied, spotting Corbley sitting at the end of the bar, his hat on his knee and a drink in his hand. “Mr. Corbley,” she said. “Enjoy the show?”

“Looked like you had it handled,” Corbley said, pushing a shot at her. “Looks like you need this.”

Ada knocked back the shot and leaned with her hands on the bar, sighing. “Finnbar’s gone off to see his northern rose, I asked Mrs. Barnes to tell him to meet me.”

Corbley said something to Hanasut and she stepped away, ordering a drink. She had to repeat herself a few times to make the bartender understand her.

“Are you going to tell him then?” Corbley asked.

“I don’t know.” Ada rubbed her face.

“How the hell do you not know? What are ya goin’ to tell him if not that?” Corbley watched her. “What happened to ‘sacrificin’ him on the altar’?”

Ada felt her stomach drop. Of course, Corbley would remember that. “I meant it when I said it.”

Four yellow eyes on her. “But not now?”

Ada looked at him. “What’s he done since he got here except be everything I’ve asked him to be and more? I’d give my right arm for half a dozen more men like him.”

Corbley rattled the ice in his drink. “Plenty’a people here do what you ask. How much’a this is you being sore that you never got to play soldier?”

“It wasn’t about playing soldier.”

“Right, right, I forgot. It was about buildin’ a utopia.” Corbley didn’t roll his eyes, but he might as well have. “I only wanna know what you mean to do. He’s gonna find out, sooner or later. If you wanna call him your friend, seems to me he oughta hear it from you. And his knowin’ might be the difference between his livin’ and dyin’.” Corbley took a drink. “But you know that, don’t ya?”

Ada heaved a sigh, rolling the shot glass between her hands. “Why can’t things ever be peaceful around here, Corbley?”

Corbley laughed. “Because if ya couldn’t find trouble, you’d make it.” 

#

Ada learned early the value of being quiet. She knew every creaky board in her father’s house, and in her stocking feet, Ada could be a ghost in its halls.

“Ada—” Rebecca whispered.

Ada held a finger over her lips, giving her sister a scolding look. Their parents had gone out for the night, but the stewardess might hear them, and then they would both be switched for trying to sneak out. Ada was fourteen, and Rebecca just turned twelve.

They were going out to dance.

Down the stairs, close to the wall, careful and slow. Listen for the house staff. Duck out the back door, close it softly. Shoes on, and run, before the stewardess looks out the window and sees.

Ada was fast, but Rebecca was the real runner, her skinny little arms pumping as they darted around corners and down into back streets where their neighbors couldn’t see them over the walls of their compounds. She was hardly winded when they stopped, finally far enough away from the house. “Papa will have our hides.”

“Only if we get caught,” Ada said, grinning. “You’ve got dirt on your stockings. I told you, you should have worn the pants I got.”

“You stole them,” Rebecca replied, sulking. “I don’t want to dress like a boy.”

Ada shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She bent, fixing the rolled up leg of her pants. She had to wear a belt and keep the legs rolled up or she tripped over the hems. Rebecca said she looked like a poor boy with his brother’s hand-me-downs.

“Where are we even going?” Rebecca asked, chasing Ada down as she started off down the street.

“There’s a tavern down by the waterfront—”

“The waterfront?” Rebecca looked ready to kill her. “We can’t go there!”

“I’ve gone there before,” Ada said. “Trust me, we’ll be fine.”

“If Papa finds out—”

“He won’t, unless you keep dawdling and we get caught!” Ada grabbed her hand and pulled her along after. “Just trust me, okay?”

Rebecca heaved a sigh, but stopped complaining, following Ada on a winding route through the houses, far enough away from the road that nobody would see or bother them. Where the houses ended, Ada judged they were far enough away from home, and the pair slipped out onto the sidewalk, scurrying along under the street lamps.

The Old Anchor Tavern clung to the docks, looking like it might topple into the harbor any day. Ada had come there a dozen or so times, but Rebecca had always stayed behind. She was too afraid of getting caught. The only reason she was coming now was because Ada had called her a chicken, and her pride wouldn’t stand for that.

They slipped past a drunk man vomiting off the side of the dock, and through the tavern doors. The room was thick with smoke, making the lights hazy, and the music was loud enough to be felt vibrating through the floor. Places like this sometimes played pre-settlement music, stuff recorded on Earth, music that rarely ever talked about God or Hell, music that would get them all in trouble if the Bishop’s Men ever listened too close.

Ada loved the way it vibrated through her ribs, buzzed in her ears. She thought this was the way Heaven ought to feel, with music and dancing.

Rebecca clung to the back of Ada’s shirt, keeping close. Over the music, she shouted, “I don’t want to be here!”

“Aw, come on Becca,” Ada said, “just for a little while.” They would dance, maybe steal a half-finished drink, and be back home before anyone knew they were gone.

A hand clapped down on Ada’s arm. “Well, look what we have here.” A man smelling of piss and beer loomed over the both of him, a drooping mustache hanging off of his thin face. He leered at both of them. “A crossdresser and a little tart.”

Rebecca tried to pull away and the man’s bony fingers tightened around her arm. Ada kicked a foot right into his shin, and clawed at his arm with her fingernails, drawing blood. The man swore, and released his grip on her arm so he could backhand her so hard she stumbled into a table. Rebecca screamed.

“Hey, hey! What the fuck?” A hand steadied Ada, and a woman in a man’s shirt and trousers stepped between her and the man holding onto Ada. “Let the girl go, Tom. For God’s sake, look at her, she’s a kid.”

“Old enough to be sneaking into places she oughtn’t,” the man retorted.

“Maybe I didn’t make it clear enough,” the woman said, “let her go, or I’ll grind your skinny ass into the goddamn floor.” She was a big enough woman, shorter than the man but twice as broad, and Ada would believe she could beat any man.

The man snarled and shoved Rebecca at the woman. “Fuckin’ dyke,” he hissed, shouldering past them.

Ada thought that would be the end of it, but the woman grabbed her by the scruff of her shirt, and Rebecca by her blouse, hauling them both to the door. “Hey! Let me go!”

“You want another round with Tom?” the woman asked, and Ada shut up. “This ain’t no place for kids,” the woman said, dumping them both out on the dock. “Now run home, before I take a mind to chase you there with a switch.”

“I told you this was a stupid idea,” Rebecca chimed in helpfully.

Ada looked at the woman, and steeled her nerves. “No.”

The woman raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“This isn’t the only bar you go to.”

“And how d’you figure that?” The woman looked amused, now, a hand on her hip.

“’Cause you dress like that,” Ada said, nodding at her clothes. “You know where the queer bars are, don’t you?”

The woman looked at her for a moment. “You’re too young to be chasin’ tail.”

“I just want to go dancing,” Ada protested. “Father doesn’t allow dancing in the house, he says it’s a sin.”

The woman deliberated for a moment, frowning, and then, she sighed. “Fine. I’ll show ya where to go, and you won’t be bothered. Just let me get my damn coat.”

Hardly believing her luck, Ada grinned at Rebecca as soon as the door swung shut behind the woman. “Told you we’d be fine.”

The woman’s name was Moira. She was a Safe Harbor native, like they were, only her father had been a fisherman. He didn’t have any sons, so Moira was able to convince him to take her out on the boat with him, to teach her how to run it, to identify which fish were edible and which had to be thrown back. She had scars on her hands and arms from razor-edged gills and teeth, and one across her face from where she’d been slapped by a fishtail.

She only told them all this because Ada wouldn’t stop asking her questions.

The bar she showed Ada and Rebecca to was a little further from the waterfront, closer to the edge of town, but not much longer of a walk. It had no sign out front, just a purple door, which Moira knocked on, and waited for it to open.

A fat man Ada would learn was called Rosie leaned in the door. “The hell you bringing kids in for?”

“The baby dyke wants a place to dance where she won’t be assaulted by someone old enough to be her father,” Moira said.

It was as smoky and dim as the taverns Ada was used to, but it felt different. For one thing, Moira was greeted by name, and people who knew her were curious about Ada and Rebecca, and seemed delighted that they were there. By the time they slipped away into the dark hours of the morning, even Rebecca had had a good time.

They had to run to make it home, collapsing into their beds for the few short hours of sleep before the stewardess roused them, frowning suspiciously at their sluggish yawns. 

#

In his father’s absence, Aaron found the house of his youth to be a great deal quieter. Maybe it was only that the staff now regarded him with a kind of wariness, and his family was not yet ready to truly embrace his return, but either way, it left a lot of space for thinking, when he was home.

Perhaps he should have taken up James’ habit of reading till he fell asleep, so that he had something else to occupy his thoughts in the dark hours of the night, besides memories of the war. Memories of James.

Twenty years of living, struggling, fighting with someone gave you the right to think about someone without being considered sentimental.

God in Heaven, twenty years. Half his life lost to that man, and his dreams.

James had been dazzling, once. Handsome and soft-spoken—and damn near terrifying. He was smart and fast and strong, and worse: when he talked about how things could be better, you wanted to believe him. You did believe him, and believed in him, trusted that he could and would lead the Covenant into freedom. No more hiding in the shadows, no more being denied a life for the sake of being a sinner. They all wanted that.

Six years was a long time to be at war. Twenty, even more so. It was always war, with James. As long as the church still stood, James Metzger would long to see it burn.

He should have recognized it sooner, the way James became blind to anything but that fire. He couldn’t see that their little army (if their rag-tag band could even be called that) was hurtling toward destruction. Or maybe he did, and meant to take as much with him as he could. Martyrs were a powerful symbol, after all. Martyrs never truly died.

Then when push came to shove, James had the gall to stay alive. Not so ready to die for his cause, after all.

James would blame him, for losing the war. Most of the heretics would. Call him Judas, hate him, curse his name. Aaron had given them a second chance at life, a chance that too many of them seemed determined not to take.

He wouldn’t follow them onto the noble cross; death was something he could wait for.

Laying in the dark in his father’s house, part of Aaron wanted to believe that James was dead. If he was dead, then the war was over. They could all move on.

As long as there was no body, there would be whispers, and rumors—and sooner or later some surviving heretic coalition would claim to have him, and it would start all over again.

As long as James was alive, there would be no peace.

#

Aaron readied his smile, hat in hand. The door was opened by a houseman, who admitted both he and Stark into the entry hall, where a woman only a few years older than himself was waiting, dressed in dull maroon with her arms folded stiffly across her chest.

Aaron bowed slightly. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me, Mrs…?”

“Miss,” the woman corrected coolly. “Miss Leah Finnbar.”

A spinster, then. From what James had told Aaron about his closest sister, he supposed that made sense. It seemed unlikely that such a woman would have any patience for marriage, or any man the patience for her.

Leah Finnbar’s hair was streaked with grey. A family trait, then, that they lost the color so early. Her eyes were more suspicious than James’ had ever been, but that fit what he knew, too. “Please,” she said, “if you’ll follow me to the parlor. My mother and daughter are both there.”

His ears caught on that word. “Your daughter?”

“My adopted daughter.” Leah led him inside, her back straight and her posture decidedly unwelcoming. “Her mother could not care for her, so I brought her here to raise her.” She opened the door to the parlor and allowed him inside. “Momma, Mr. Reyes is here.”

The parlor was quite a luxurious room, overflowing with flowers. The air was sticky with the smell. A woman of about eighty sat on a chair by the window, pruning dead leaves from a plant, accompanied by a woman likely in her mid twenties, with dark auburn hair, who was the spitting image of Leah Finnbar. ‘Adopted,’ indeed.

Mrs. Finnbar looked up, her eyes sharp and clear. Her hand hovered, steady. “Ah, yes. You were the one who fought with James.”

“Mr. Reyes,” Leah said, “my mother, Mrs. Sarah Finnbar, and my daughter, Miss Josephine Finnbar.”

“Pleasure,” Aaron said, inclining his head. “I had hoped to ask you about him, actually.”

“Yes, you said as much in your message.” Mrs. Finnbar laid the small scissors aside, sweeping the dead leaves into a trash bin. “I have not seen him twenty-six years, Mr. Reyes, I doubt I can be of much help to you. Unless you think my prodigal son might be foolish enough to return here?” She laid her hands in her lap, staring at him coolly.

“No,” Aaron said, “but he might contact you, for your aid. He spoke often of you. I know he only lived with you for a short time—”

“Two years.” Her voice was clipped, only slightly betraying any hurt.

“—but he loved you dearly.”

Mrs. Finnbar was very quiet, for a moment. She glanced away. “I have received no such contact, nor has anyone in my house.”

“You understand I cannot simply take you on your word, where John is concerned.”

He could feel Leah bristle, behind him. Josephine glanced at her nervously, and spoke. “Mr. Reyes, my uncle has never made any attempt to contact us, as long as I can remember. He does not even know I exist.”

That was true enough, as far as Aaron could tell. It struck him as very unlikely that James would have failed to mention one of his dear, beloved sister’s children, if he knew of them. And Leah, he imagined, would be proud enough to conceal such a child from her brother.

“Nevertheless, the church will require proof,” Aaron said. “And it is my task to obtain such proof.”

“On what grounds?” Leah asked coldly. “Your supposition? Since when does the church operate on a heretic’s word?”

“Leah,” Mrs. Finnbar said quietly, and Aaron watched Leah’s jaw tighten. Leah sat, arms folded close. Time had not diminished her temper, it seemed.

“I will not be the one looking at your messages, unless there is evidence that you were in contact with John. That job will be left up to the Bishop’s Men. If there is nothing, I will happily leave you alone.”

“Except to ask where else you should look,” Leah said.

Aaron smiled at her. “No, Miss Finnbar. I think I know John Metzger well enough that I don’t need to ask where to look for him.”

“Josephine,” Mrs. Finnbar said. “See that Mr. Reyes has what he needs.”

“Momma—” Leah started to protest.

“I will speak with your mother alone.” Mrs. Finnbar waved at Josephine to go, and the young woman rose, softly asking Aaron to follow her.

Josephine glanced at him from out the corner of her eye as she took him from the parlor. She asked a housewoman to bring her an assortment of devices and records, and stood silently in the entry hall, hands clasped. Aaron supposed he would be quickly shepherded out the door when he was done.

Stark was hovering by the door, and, annoyingly, he was staring at Josephine. Aaron put himself between them with the pretense of looking at a landscape on the wall. It seemed to be a painting of the Settlement in the early days. “What kind of stories have they told you about your uncle, Miss Finnbar?”

Josephine looked at him warily. “My mother speaks of him when she talks about their childhood. Grandmother says he was quiet and good-natured, when she knew him.”

A careful qualification. Aaron could appreciate that. “How many people know that John Metzger is your uncle?”

Josephine lifted her chin, and for a moment she could have been James, with that false air of pride he put on to make others believe he truly felt that way. “Some of the older people, but no one speaks of it. He left before I was born, and my mother adopted me. Why?”

Still, that insistence on adoption. He supposed it made sense, to play the respectable line. He hoped the girl wasn’t fool enough to actually believe it. “I only wondered how you might have endured these last few years, with his name everywhere.” Aaron gave Stark a warning glance. The last thing any of them needed was him getting entangled with a relative of James’. Replacing him would be far more trouble than it was worth.

“Why do you call him that?” Josephine asked.

“Pardon?”

“You called him John. All my life, I’ve only heard my mother and grandmother call him James.” Josephine was looking at him like she was working out a puzzle. “Mama always said he would never have let anyone call him John, because it was his father’s name.”

“I don’t call him John,” Aaron said. “Not usually.” He had done it to needle Leah, a guess, and a well placed one. He had only made the mistake of saying it to James’ face once, shortly after they met. James hadn’t said anything but the look in his eyes—that had been enough.

The housewoman brought what Josephine had asked for, and Aaron watched her as she transferred information between devices, balanced on a table with an orchid. Rare, to see one that wasn’t made of cloth. “Do you think you will find him, Mr. Reyes?”

“I think I have the best chance out of anyone in the Covenant,” Aaron answered.

“And what do you think will happen then?”

“I think he will die.” No sense in playing games with the girl. James was nothing but someone else’s memory to her.

Josephine looked at him for a moment, and then handed him a drive. “A record of all correspondence to and from this house in the last three years. That will be sufficient, I hope?”

“More than enough, thank you, Miss Finnbar.” He handed the drive to Stark, and bowed slightly to her. “Do give your mother and grandmother my regards.”

“Mr. Reyes,” she said, “when you find him—it would mean a lot to me if you could tell him that my mother and grandmother never gave up hope that he would come home.”

Aaron gazed at her for a moment. “That would be a very cruel thing, Miss Finnbar.”

That hard look she gave him, he knew it well, but not from her. “I know. Please do tell him, Mr. Reyes.”

#

Finnbar had a soft spot for the Randall children. He refused to admit that they were his favorite house to visit every month, but he didn’t really have to. He even said hello to their family at church, which was remarkable, considering how many weeks he had spent sitting silently in the back, avoiding even looking at anyone.

Henry, in particular, seemed pleased to see Finnbar, which Ada hadn’t expected. The boy was usually so suspicious of strangers, the speed with which he had warmed to Finnbar surprised her.

She was watching the pair of them in the sitting room, Henry talking about the engineering books Ada had ordered for him and showing Finnbar his sketches, and Finnbar saying just enough to keep him going. Visits to the Randall house were one of the very few times Ada reliably saw him in a good mood.

Joanna was less sure of him, she skated around the edge of rooms to whisper to Ada, self-conscious and increasingly ghostly. It bothered Ada, seeing the quiet creep into Joanna, watching her make herself smaller. She had been such a brassy little girl, so happy to take up space.

“Miss Carl?”

Ada had forgotten that Mrs. Randall was talking to her. “I’m sorry,” she said, “my mind wandered off, what were you saying?”

Mrs. Randall clutched anxiously at her kerchief. “You mentioned earlier that Miss Webb is in correspondence with a potential schoolteacher.”

Ada nodded. “Yes, it’s late enough now that there’s no sense in building a schoolhouse until after the floods, but we should have a proper school by the end of next year.”

“Ah, that’s a relief,” Mrs. Randall said. “I worry, sometimes, that Jo and Henry are missing out.”

“Henry would do just fine with access to a library, I think,” Ada said. “He’s so curious.”

“He needs direction,” Mrs. Randall said. “And discipline. We could buy him plenty of books if we had a unit for every project he leaves half-finished because he gets bored.”

Ada lingered, perhaps a little longer than she should have. Joanna had gone off to play with her friends, and eventually it seemed like Mrs. Randall had run out of things to talk about, so Ada got to her feet and Finnbar took the hint.

“Is something bothering you?” He was watching her as she climbed into the truck.

Ada fanned herself with her hat, watching the road. “I could give you a list of things that aren’t bothering me, and that’d go faster.” Still no rain. Her parents quiet. Corbley’s comments about her lack of curiosity. “Word is that Reyes has announced he’s going looking for Metzger.” She said it without giving herself the chance to change her mind, her pulse spiking as the words hung in the air.

Finnbar had reached to start the truck, but he paused. “Has he?” His voice was very quiet.

“Oh, yes. Come forward and seek forgiveness, or face justice when he’s found.” She glanced at him. “All sounds quite bold, doesn’t it?”

Finnbar was staring down the road, almost as if he expected to see Reyes there. “Reyes always had a way of growing more courage when he had someone powerful supporting him.”

“Do you think he’ll succeed?”

“In finding Metzger?”

Ada nodded, and Finnbar was quiet for a moment. “He might. He very well might.”

“And if he does?”

Finnbar started the truck, his face turned away from Ada. “Then Reyes had better hope he came sufficiently protected.” 

#

Rebecca was quiet for a few days, after that excursion. She waited until she and Ada were alone doing their schoolwork to ask. “Ada… why didn’t you say anything when she called you a… well…”

Ada stared very intently at her practice ledger. It was meant to teach her how to balance household books, so someday she could look after her husband’s house. Be a proper businessman’s wife.

“Ada.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t mind being one, so much.” Ada scratched aimlessly at the margins of her ledger with a pencil. “Maybe I’d rather be one than be married.”

Rebecca looked stricken. “You’ll go to Hell.”

Ada shrugged. “Can’t be any worse than living in this place.”

“Ada—”

“I’d rather burn than pretend to be what I’m not. Manage some man’s house and raise his brats. Have to—lay with him—” Ada shuddered. “I can’t do it, Becca.” She heard the stewardess coming to check on them. “Hey, let me see those figures again, I think I wrote down the wrong number for the electricity cost.”

Rebecca would go to that bar with her again, to dance, but Ada suspected it was to make sure that Ada had to go home. She wouldn’t leave Rebecca to make the walk alone, and Becca knew that.

Moira was there fairly regularly, she would say hello, ask what trouble they were getting up to. Sometimes when she came it was with new injuries that would become new scars. Ada looked forward most to the nights when she would see Moira.

“How is it you ain’t ever gotten caught sneaking out?” Moira asked one night, shortly after Ada’s fifteenth birthday.

“We only go out when our parents are gone,” Ada said. “The stewardess is an addict, she’s trying to hide it, but I know. I just have to wait until she thinks we’re asleep, and gets high.”

“Jesus,” Moira muttered. “What’ll you do if she gets fired?”

Ada shrugged. “Have to figure out how to get around the new one, I guess.”

Moira had a girlfriend, a pretty fat woman with wiry dark hair and a big smile. Her name was Abbie, and she was sweet, but didn’t seem too interested in Ada. Ada wanted to like her, because Moira liked her.

She had no want for dance teachers, when she was there. Moira taught her the footwork that the sailors did, complicated rhythms that worked best with hard-soled shoes and, according to Moira, on a tabletop where everybody could shout about your form and choreography. Rosie taught her how to dance with movements that rolled out of her middle and through her limbs, drove her to perfect each push and pull to precision. “Hell, girl, you think you’re gonna go home with somebody dancing like that? Fuck no, I know you wanna be the best, so be the best.”

It annoyed her, sometimes, but she didn’t stop going. Even on the nights she didn’t go out, when everyone was asleep, she would go down in the cellar and practice, with no music, just the movements, sinking them into her bones.

Someone might show her how to do one thing, or she would watch the dance floor, and she danced until her feet blistered and bled, and she had to wrap them carefully to keep the laundrywoman from finding bloodstains in her stockings.

“What are you going to do, when Mother starts introducing you to men?” Rebecca asked once, on their way home.

“Prove I’m smarter than them,” Ada said. “Men hate that.”

Rebecca made the sound she always made when she was peeved. “You can’t do that forever.”

“Men are very stupid.”

Rebecca punched her arm, but not very hard, and Ada laughed. “Ah, come on, Becca. She won’t start until I’m seventeen. What are you so worried about, anyway?”

#

“Keep your distance from the Finnbar girl,” Aaron said, shutting the door behind him. Another anteroom, too small for what they were meant to do with it.

Stark hardly glanced at him. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to, the way you were making eyes at her.” Aaron wished they had been afforded a less dusty workspace. “She may only be Metzger’s niece, but she’s still his kin.”

Stark took the drive from his pocket, handing it off to a subordinate who ran off in the direction of a bank of computers as old as the Settlement. “And you may have been rebaptized, Reyes, but you’re still Metzger’s right hand.”

Aaron felt ice in his gut. “I denounced him.”

“Three months a saved man after half your life a sinning heretic,” Stark replied, glancing over his shoulder at Aaron. “Christ and the church may have forgiven you, Mr. Reyes, but no one has forgotten.” He folded his hands behind his back, turning slightly. “You needn’t worry about the Finnbar girl. I know my duties.”

“Of course,” Aaron said, “until the moment her uncle is publicly executed, at which point he will cease to be an obstacle to you.”

“You’re free to go whenever you like, Mr. Reyes.”

So that was that. Stark had no more use for him that day, and Aaron was nothing but a nuisance. He wasn’t ‘free,’ of course. Stark would have someone tail him wherever he went, watch whatever house he went into. Rebaptized and all it counted for was that there was no bullet in his skull.

He could almost see the ‘I warned you’ expression on James’ face. The bastard could never even be smug about it. It was always just a fact, with him. I was right, and you were too fool to see it. It infuriated Aaron just to remember.

He could have called a car, but he was restless and in no mood to speak to a driver, so he walked, hands tucked into his pockets. Summer would be over soon, which would limit their ability to travel, if they had any notion of where James was. God only knew what he had got up to in the last several months, where he could have hidden himself away, who he could have convinced to protect him. James wore false names like new shirts, always so eager to be rid of the one he had.

He had used to keep a list. Names he had previously used, when and where, names he could use in the future. They had made a game out of it, once. Could he pass for a Jack, a Thomas. They borrowed surnames from people they met, names in the news. Rearranged them into the most pleasing combinations. They must have passed hundreds of evenings that way, hunkered in some awful inn or in a tent in the woods. If they even had a tent.

It had been a useful distraction, crafting those new names. Something to think about besides hunger and fear.

He didn’t want to go home. He also didn’t want Stark’s tail, who he had been watching out of the corner of his eye every time he turned a corner, to follow him to the wrong sort of bar, so he walked to where the city overlooked the river, and watched the boats slide by, the wind picking up as the sun went down, and driving a chill through his jacket. He pulled out his cigarette case, fumbled with the lighter.

His fortieth birthday was a month gone.

Strange, it felt like not all that long ago he hadn’t expected to live to see forty. James had been surprised when he made it that far, after the war had started. (Aaron had teased him about his grey hair, James had replied that he had never been terribly concerned about leaving behind an attractive corpse.)

They had both lived longer than they had any right to. Aaron supposed it was only a matter of time before one of their former brothers-in-arms decided to avenge their cause, and kill him.

Frankly, he would be offended if it was anyone less than James Metzger, himself.


	10. East of the Garden

“I don’t like the way that tank is echoing, Mr. Li.” Ester stood with her hands on her hips, broad sun hat tied under her chin with a ribbon.

The riverbed was completely dry, and beginning to crack. No rain, not even a cloud in the sky. She had been watching dust devils dance over the fields laying fallow while Ada went on her morning run. They had already cut back on irrigation, letting the far reaches of the fields wither. Shower rations were down to one a week.

“I don’t like it either,” Li replied, banging the lid shut. “Not more than three feet of water in the bottom of that tank.” 

Ester let out a breath. Every year it seemed like they bought more tanks to fill during the floods and it never seemed like it was enough. Carlston grew too fast, they never seemed to accurately estimate how much water they would need. The hours spent installing, filling, inspecting and maintaining those tanks on which the town’s survival depended—Ester guessed she had spent more time walking the tanks in the past five years than anything else.

“Harvest the last of the two eastern most fields,” Ester told him, “we’ll not water them any further.”

The forest whispered in the wind as Ester made her way back into town, and uneasiness settled low in her belly. The river was dry, and that meant that they weren’t the only things looking for water.

Water-starved pedes were nothing to be trifled with.

The house Ester sought was small and on the far end of Carlston from the house she shared with Ada, at the foot of a small hill not far from the mine. It had a clear view of a great deal of the town, and in the middle of the week, Pastor Richards could often be found sitting on its porch, working on his sermons.

“Ah, Miss Webb!” he said, rising from his chair when he saw her. “Can I get you anything? I’m afraid I haven’t much in the way of food, but—”

“Just some water, please.” Ester loosened the ribbon, removing her hat in the shade of Richards’ porch. Pastor Richards disappeared inside his house to fetch water, and Ester looked out over their little boom town, the fields tucked into the soft roll of the hills, the nearly finished cattle barn, the pale snake of empty riverbed.

It terrified her, how fragile it all was.

“I hope you won’t take my asking as being pushy,” Richards said, emerging with a glass of warm water. “But, concerning the building of a proper church—”

“We are dangerously low on water again this season, Pastor,” Ester said, as gently as she could. “You cannot have a church if your congregants have no water.”

“Of course, of course,” Richards said, trying hard not to sound disappointed. Every time she visited him, he asked the same thing.

Ada had been stalling the building of a church since Carlston was hardly more than a mining camp. In most new towns, the church was the first thing to be built, but Ada always found reasons to put it off, until it just so happened that she usually wasn’t lying when she said there was no money for it. Not in her pockets, anyway. She would have to cut everyone’s pay for a while, if she meant to build a church.

Ada never said this to Richards, of course—he would have wanted it put to a vote in town meeting. He would persuade the faithful to sacrifice a few month’s pay for their salvation, and it was all too likely they would agree to it, so Ada—through Ester—always made sure that Richards believed there was no money for a church because she had to see to the health of its congregation, and surely he couldn’t argue with that.

It struck Ester as a little cruel, but Ada’s suspicion of the church wouldn’t be eased, and she thought it kinder that Richards didn’t know the truth.

Although perhaps if he did, it might have dissuaded him from his misguided attempts to woo Ada.

“If it isn’t… too prying, Miss Webb,” Richards said, “I have my concerns about Miss Carl’s relationship to our new sheriff.”

If anything, Ester was impressed that he had waited this long to ask. A remarkable show of restraint, on his part. “What concerns, might I ask?” Ada would have appreciated the tone of surprised innocence she put on, and the way it made Richards grow flustered.

“It isn’t, of course, that I don’t trust Miss Carl—she is, of course, her own woman—”

“You fear Mr. Finnbar’s influence,” Ester said, unwilling to listen to Richards stammer about Ada any further.

“Well—you see, it’s only that I have never spoken directly with the man, since we were introduced. I think he avoids me. And I have heard—rumors of behaviors I am not comfortable discussing with a lady such as yourself.”

“Mr. Finnbar’s vices are no worse than those of any other man,” Ester said in a soothing tone that she knew would do nothing to reassure Pastor Richards. “And Ada is no more interested in marrying him than any other man.”

Ada grumbled about marriage whenever she had been drinking. “As if it’s, alright, Miss Carl, you’ve had your fun, but now it’s time to settle down and be a good Christian mother. Ha! As if that’s the natural state of every woman.” Ester could recite it in her sleep.

“I see,” Richards said, looking not at all confident. “Miss Webb… and forgive me, please, if I am prying—but why does she loathe the idea of marriage so fiercely?”

“She simply can’t abide men, Pastor. She never has.” Ester smiled politely. “But I came to ask you about something else.”

“Forgive me, I’ve been terribly rude—please, sit.” He pulled out a chair for her, and tidied up the books he had brought out to reference as he wrote his sermon. “Now,” he said, sitting across from her. “What can I do for you, Miss Webb?”

Ester sipped at her water. “Neither Mrs. Cole nor her son have been to church, since Mr. Cole was buried. I had hoped you might look in on them, see how they’re doing.”

“Of course.” He paused. “Is that all?”

“No, Pastor Richards—” Ester chose her next words carefully. “I had hoped you might organize a pray-out.”

Richards looked visibly uncomfortable. “The church has yet to give an official policy on such activities, Miss Webb.”

“So it’s not forbidden, then,” she said.

“Not exactly, no, but it is… discouraged.” Richards folded his hands. “The Council of Bishops are disagreed on pray-outs, but many believe that they are primitive, and arrogant attempts to move the will of God.”

“Surely, it’s no sin to pray for rain,” Ester said. “We would only be asking the Lord for his mercy. It would lift everyone’s spirits, I think, to feel that they were doing something, more than just… waiting.”

“I will… consider it.”

“Thank you, Pastor Richards.” Ester set the glass aside, and pulled her hat onto her head once more. “Please don’t tell Mrs. Cole that I asked you to visit them. It would be better if you did not mention me or Ada at all.”

“Of course, Miss Webb.” 

#

Ada reached across the bed, trailing her fingers down Ester’s back. “You haven’t said a word all night.” Ester’s braids were wrapped under a cap, and the fabric of her cotton nightshirt was smooth and warm under Ada’s fingertips.

Ester rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling. “I didn’t have anything to say that wasn’t about water.” Her voice was weary. “This keeps happening, and I can’t help but wonder if this place isn’t trying to push us out.”

Ada shifted closer, putting her arm across Ester and squeezing her shoulder. “Well, the Lord knows what a spiteful creature I am.”

Ester gave a tired laugh, and turned her head to touch her forehead to Ada’s. “You’re going to go off into the woods again, aren’t you?”

“I have to, Star.”

“You don’t. Not you. You can send men to do it, you don’t have to go with them.” Ester reached up to touch her face. “I worry about you.”

“I know you do.” Ada kissed the end of her nose. “They need to see me as invested in this place as they are.”

“You’re more invested than they are, that’s the problem.” Ester rubbed her cheek with a thumb. “Take Corbley with you, at least.”

“He’s in the middle of a molt,” Ada said. “He has Hanasut monitoring the mine in his place because she’s already spent so much time there. The men have come to respect her, apparently.” Or at least they respected the raw physical intimidation of a towering serpent with teeth nearly an inch long. Ada was almost envious. “I’ll take Finnbar, it’ll be fine.”

Ester grimaced. “I am beyond sick of talking about Finnbar.”

Ada laughed, and kissed her. “Fair enough.” She twined her fingers through Ester’s. “How did your visit with Richards go?”

They had spent so many evenings like this, face to face in bed, talking things over. Ada would feel the tension uncoil in her shoulders, her limbs loosening as she listened to Ester’s voice, the dip in its pitch now that she was no longer on guard, the rise and fall of her breath.

“You’re not listening to me.” Ester looked amused. “What are you thinking about?”

“When I first met you,” Ada said, her face half sunk in the pillow. “How much I hated you.”

Ester giggled, giving Ada that broad smile she adored. “I thought you were such a petty, melodramatic monster.”

Ada smiled. “I thought you were a stuffy asshole. A goody two shoes. I couldn’t stand you.” Their tutor had used to forbid both of them from speaking so they could get through an entire lesson without a fight. Sometimes it had even worked.

Ester pulled close, tucking her head under Ada’s chin. Her cheek was warm through Ada’s nightshirt. “We’ll survive this,” she murmured. “One way or another. Through sheer spite and luck.”

“God willing,” Ada murmured. “And even if He isn’t.”

#

Sometimes, when they had been alone for long enough, and James had stopped thinking about whatever was going on in the world outside, Micah could get him to smile. A real smile, one that wasn’t sad or self-conscious, a smile that glowed, a smile that Micah knew without asking was only meant for him.

“You’re overthinking it,” Micah said, having just narrowly avoided having his foot stepped on for a third time. “Just—trust me.”

“I do trust you.”

There was something natural in those dancing lessons, some easy way of spending time together. It wasn’t often he had gotten to dance with a partner, before he came to Carlston.

James’ cheek brushed against his temple, coarse and warm, and Micah turned his head ever so slightly inward, almost tempted to end the lesson early, but he wouldn’t, not as long as that warm, broad hand rested in a perfectly respectable place on his back.

It had made him laugh, at first, how carefully James treated him, but the sincerity with which he did it, the way he seemed honestly puzzled when Micah pointed it out, had softened something in Micah that he hadn’t known needed softening.

Micah had asked him once, if James had ever looked at any of the others at the brothel. Thought about going with them. He had been trying to figure out, mostly, what it was that had drawn James to him—but James had said, with complete and total sincerity, that he hadn’t noticed anyone else once he saw Micah, and Micah had gotten so flustered he had forgotten to press for the why. After that, it had seemed like something silly to bring up, when he was so clearly the only face James came to see.

Even more so, when James entrusted him with his name.

Micah hadn’t believed it, when James first told him. It was absurd—James Finnbar was a soft-spoken man who was too polite to brothel boys and rarely had more than one drink, if he even finished the first one. He had the brand of a heretic, maybe, but he wasn’t a butcher, not the devil that had burned churches and slaughtered priests.

He couldn’t be.

Except that he had never known James to lie to him, or to be boastful. He spoke about it so calmly, sometimes with regret and sometimes with a faint undercurrent of anger.

He had to be.

“Why tell me this?”

“Because someone ought to know, and I wanted it to be you.”

James pressed a kiss to Micah’s forehead, signaling a quiet end to the dancing lesson.

“Stay here tonight,” Micah blurted. He was acting foolish, he had made fun of other people for less.

James smiled, just a little. “Alright.”

He always stayed, when Micah asked. Micah half expected he could ask for one of the moons, and James would try to deliver it to him.

Micah pulled James onto the bed next to him, hardly giving him the chance to do much more than take off his shoes. “I want to ask you something.”

James slid his arm around Micah’s neck, fingers tracing idly through his hair. “What about?” There was a slight guardedness to his voice, expecting questions he wasn’t prepared to answer.

“I want to know why you were branded.” He felt as if he were crossing some boundary by asking, breaking a silent agreement—but since he had learned James’ name he was no longer content with agreed upon secrets. He wanted to know, to fill in the story of James Finnbar, of John James Metzger, to know where the man he knew met the man he had only heard stories about.

James relaxed a little. That was a safe question, then, though Micah didn’t know why. “I assaulted a preacher, because he accosted my sister.”

“You have a sister?” It had never occurred to him that James might have a family. He never spoke about them.

“Three, all older.” James touched the shoulder where the brand was, as if it pained him just thinking about it. “He called her a whore, grabbed her in the street. I broke his nose and I was told some of his teeth, as well.”

“And they branded you for that?” Prison, he might have expected, or some kind of public chastisement—

“No.” He let his head fall back on the pillow. “They branded me because I wouldn’t repent. Branded me and told me to leave the Settlement or face further punishment.”

“What happened to your sister?”

“I don’t know.” James got a sort of far-away look in his eyes. “I was given a suitcase—I recognized it as hers—packed with all my things. There was money hidden in the lining. I left and thought it would be better for her if I was no longer a burden on her.”

Micah settled against his side, bringing James back to him. “I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.” His arm settled around Micah’s shoulders, as if to anchor himself.

Micah drew loops across the front of James’ shirt. “All the places you could have gone, why’d you come here?”

James wasn’t hasty with an answer. He turned his head, brushing across Micah’s cheek. “It seemed like I wasn’t going to be the only person leaving something behind.” 

#

“So at what point are you going to start paying your rent to Daisy, instead of Mrs. Barnes?” Carl gave James a teasing smile, her feet up on the dash.

“If I’d known you were going to drag me out of bed before dawn, I might have slept somewhere else.” James rubbed at his face, following the truck in front of them. “Any special reason we’re out this early?”

“Pedes don’t move around as much when it’s cool,” Ada said. “And they’re a sight meaner when they haven’t had water in a while.”

They were looking for a particular plant, she said. Magdalene’s Tears. It grew deep in the forests, and during the wet season grew enormous fruit-like swells that stored water through the dry season. The fruit could be drained to fill the empty water barrels they were currently transporting—but they were also frequently sought out by the wildlife.

“Anything else in these woods I ought to be worried about?” James really wasn’t in the mood to wander into another situation uninformed, having to drag the facts out of Carl.

“Well there’s always the Devil’s Tongues,” Ada said, “or didn’t they have those anyplace you’ve been?”

“I know what a Devil’s Tongue is,” James muttered. Nasty little creatures, not dissimilar from snakes, red and with two heads, forked at the neck like the devil’s tongue—though only one housed a brain. With that head, the Tongue would bite, injecting venom. With the other, the ‘false head,’ it burrowed into the flesh of the victim and deposited its eggs, which would hatch in the victim’s corpse. He had seen a cow killed by it once, when he was a child, and he wasn’t likely to ever forget it.

They were less numerous, in places that had been settled for some time, since the corpses of those bitten by them were burned to destroy the eggs, and adults were killed on sight.

“And of course the various and sundry bugs, serpents, and nasty plants that one might run into.” Carl was fidgeting, trying to keep her tone lighthearted to conceal her anxiety. “We’ve done this kind of water harvest a few times. We can generally get enough to fill some household rations, ease the strain on the town supply a little while.”

“For how long?”

“A couple of weeks.” Carl’s fidgeting increased. “Mallory has a better water infrastructure,” she said. “There’s a natural spring, up there, runs through most of the dry season, even past when the river dries up. And wells, deep wells. We don’t have enough groundwater in Carlston for a well to make much difference, so we depend on the surface stuff.”

“You’ve survived drought before,” James ventured, trying to ease her. Carl’s anxiety was infectious, if only because he didn’t necessarily trust her judgment when she was agitated.

“Not everyone did.” She was staring out at the trees. “Some people died. Old people. A few babies, when their mothers couldn’t nurse them anymore. Town’s bigger, now. Keeps getting bigger, more than the budget for infrastructure can keep up with. Everybody thinks the mine made me rich but,” she laughed. “I haven’t got a fucking dime that doesn’t go back into this place one way or another.”

There was a moment’s silence. “You know there’s no place like this anywhere else in the Covenant,” James said. “What you’ve built—it’s special.”

Carl laughed a little. “Thanks. I try.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, about the brothel.”

“Your second home? Yes, do go on.”

James ignored the jab. “There’s a good—eight men? Out of twenty total. Most wouldn’t even allow any.” In any other city those men would find their ways to the queer bars, maybe be able to rent a room, if they were lucky. Usually, they bounced from place to place, following the men with money who gave them a place to stay.

Carl shrugged. “I’m a thoughtful person, what can I say?”

“Don’t give me that shit.” The deflections grated on him—reminded him too much of Aaron.

“You telling me you haven’t started to make friends with the other queers here?” Carl arched her eyebrows. “You’re not the only heretic came my way after the war, Finnbar, and the heretics did seem to have more queers than most. We’re not big enough yet to have a discreet queer bar, so for now, I thought the brothel as a place of discretion would be better than nothing. I know there are some women who go there who aren’t residents, and unless you really do spend all your time shut away with Micah, I imagine you’ve seen them.”

He had, a few times. They didn’t often linger in the main room, but he crossed paths with them in the halls, where everyone quietly avoided each other’s eyes. Most didn’t dress in men’s clothes, like Carl, but some did. He wondered how many of them had come because they recognized that quality in Carl herself.

“Micah seems like a sweet boy,” Carl said, tapping her fingers against the door. “Certainly, he’s sweet on you.”

James wished he knew how much longer he had to be in that truck making conversation. “Have you heard anything else about Reyes?”

Carl shook her head. “Laying low for now, it seems. Hansen could probably tell me more, but he won’t want to see my face again so soon.”

Aaron was looking for him. Looking to kill him.

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t the first time. Aaron had put a gun to his head a few times, towards the end of the war.

He could never seem to bring himself to pull the trigger.

This, though, this was different. Aaron would have more than a few scared dissenters at his back. This, he wasn’t going to be able to talk or fight his way out of.

The truck in front of him began to slow and stop, and Carl slid her feet off the dash, sitting up. “Ah, good,” she breathed, “the grove is still here.”

Magdalene’s Tears grew between the trees, a dense low-to-the-ground plant with huge, oblong fruits that were as long as Hanasut was tall and twice as wide. Carl had brought a party of about twenty or so men, five armed with rifles to keep watch while the rest worked. Carl jumped to work with them, pulling down a rubber hose from the back of the first truck and puncturing one of the fruit near the base as two of the men leveraged it up to get water flowing into the barrels.

“Miss Carl!” A man called to her from the edge of the grove.

Carl glanced up from the barrel where she had just secured the other end of the hose. “What is it, Mr. Stewart?”

“There’s something over here.”

Carl glanced at James and motioned for him to follow her, making her way through the Tears to where Stewart was standing. She had hardly reached him before James saw the change in her posture, a tensing. “Finnbar,” she said, reaching back as if to pull him closer. “Finnbar, get over here.”

He caught up to her, looking where Carl and Stewart were staring through the weeds. “Last year’s floods must have washed this out,” Stewart was saying, “I think it was all overgrown, then.”

There was the remains of about ten or twelve low buildings, mostly decayed because they were little more than log cabins, built from the same trees that were now growing up between them.

“It’s an exile town,” James said, not quite believing it. There was nothing else it could be—the buildings were rectangular, not round enough to be of Kelchak make. And it was old enough, to be this ruined.

Carl finally tore her eyes away from the decayed remains. “A what?”

James made his way forward, determined to get a better look, and Carl followed him, muttering curses under her breath and demanding to know what the hell he was doing.

“It was just after the Separation,” he told her, “everything was in chaos, the church was just rising to power—there were heretics and non-Christians who didn’t want to be under the church’s rule. They were driven out.” He stepped over one of the low walls, looking around for anything else that might remain. “A lot of them were ill-equipped, and died, but some—some were able to build settlements of their own. I’m amazed anyone got this far.” He bent, pulling back the weeds, looking for anything that might remain.

“I’ve never heard about any exiles,” Carl said, coming around.

“You wouldn’t have. It’s not in any history books that have been published in the last—sixty years or so.” When he had first learned of them, he had been in a Reyes house, in a library kept by Aaron’s grandfather. He had scoured dozens of history books for any mention of them after that, the exiles who were driven into the wilderness. Some were killed when their camps were discovered—or they were driven even further away, to perish in the wilds.

James paused, his fingers finding something that wasn’t plant or dirt. Pulling the weeds away he picked it up, rotting cloth barely clinging to cracked and weathered plastic. It was a child’s doll.

He glanced up at Carl to find her staring at it.

“If this is an exile town,” she said, very quietly, “all the way out here… it wouldn’t have lasted long. Maybe they thought the river would sustain them. They wouldn’t have known how unpredictable the rains are, this far inland. First the water goes. Maybe they find the Tears. Maybe it’s enough. Maybe it isn’t.” She looked at James. “Maybe the animals took care of the rest.”

Stewart was still hanging back, keeping his distance. The other men had come to look, but they didn’t come any closer than Stewart did. “The place is cursed,” someone said. “Devil-haunted.”

“Get back to work,” Carl snapped. “Worry about pedes first, and ghosts later.” She glowered at the men until they left, and turned her back to them, letting out a slow breath. “I’ve been out here for years, I never saw any sign of this.”

“Stewart was right, the floods probably washed it out, after decades of accumulating silt and overgrowth.” James stood, still holding the rotted doll. He had thought the last of the exile towns would have been destroyed and built over as the colony expanded. Just after the Separation, they had barely grown beyond the Settlement. To make it this far—the people who had must have endured a great deal.

And they had perished anyway.

“Do you think any of them could have survived?” Carl asked, picking her way through the underbrush. “That there might be more of these, where there are still people? Descendants of the exiles?”

“God willing,” James said, quietly. “And God willing, the church never finds them.”

Carl tripped on something, then cursed and jumped back. Her shoe had dislodged something round and broken and—bone.

Carl stared at it, her face blank for a moment. She crouched in the weeds, picking up the skull in her hands, staring at what remained of its face. A somber look on her face, she brushed dirt from an eye socket, and carried it inside the wall. “The last of them probably didn’t even have proper burials.” She set the skull in a corner, and brushed her hands on her trousers, looking away.

“You have something rare here,” James told her.

“I have a place of death.” Carl started to turn to him. “Don’t ask me to treasure a grave.”

He barely caught the movement—something dropping out a tree above, something red-orange and hardly longer than his hand. It dropped onto her shoulder and he saw Carl’s eyes go wide and fearful and heard the sharp, wordless sound that came out of her when the Devil’s Tongue bit.

She reacted faster than he did, hand flying up to grab the false head, jerking it away from her body as far as she could as the true head dug it’s teeth into her flesh. James ran to her, pulling a knife from his belt and cutting the thing’s head off. The true head released its grip and fell useless to the ground as Carl flung the rest of the writhing body away, a spot of blood on her shirt from the bite. There was no chance she didn’t already have the venom in her blood.

“What the hell happened?” someone shouted.

“You’re going to want to tie me to something,” Carl said, her hands shaking, “before the hallucinations have me running off through the woods.”

He had read about it, what happened to people bitten by the Devil’s Tongues. It started with your brain. Hallucinations, aggression, loss of coordination, vision, or hearing. Then it moved elsewhere—into the lungs, to suffocate the victim with bile.

“I need rope,” James shouted, “Jacobs, get Boulos! Carl’s been bitten by a Devil’s Tongue!”

“There’s no use getting the doctor,” Carl said, her face pale. “He can’t get here in time, I’m not even sure he has any antivenom.”

“If you think I’m going to sit here and watch you die without trying to do something about it, you’ve lost your fucking mind,” he told her, moving her to a tree. She was limp as a rag doll, stumbling like she could barely control her limbs.

“You and Corbley,” she said, “you have to take care of Ester. Promise me you’ll—”

“You’re not dying today,” James said, “not if I have anything to say about it.”

She laughed, not looking him in the eye. “Do you have special dispensation from Christ? I’m not allowed to die unless you say so?”

Someone tossed him a rope, and Carl offered up her wrists, standing there while James secured her to the tree. He had tied a fair few people like this in the past, but not generally with the aim of saving their lives.

“Make them keep working,” Carl said. “We need the water, no matter what happens to me.”

“I’ll keep an eye on them, but my main priority is you.”

“They could use your help—”

“I’m not leaving you alone.” James met her eyes. “Alright? I’m staying right here.”

Carl sucked in a breath, and nodded. “Alright.”

Perhaps the worst thing about the bite of a Devil’s Tongue was how long it took for the venom to set in. Carl sat at the base of the tree, her head against her knees. “I can’t feel my arm.”

The only thing James could think to do was to talk to her, to keep her mind off of what they knew was inevitable. “Tell me about why you came here. Tell me why you decided to build Carlston.”

Carl lifted her head only slightly, her dark eyes burning. “I came here because my little sister threw herself into the fucking ocean.”

James sat across from her. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“I don’t. Not anymore.”

“What was her name?”

“Rebecca. Rebecca Claire.” Carl rested her head on her arms. “She was just a month shy of seventeen.”

“Any other siblings?”

“No, it was just us. Just me, now.” Her cheek laid against her arms. “You know, now, why my parents are so furious I spent my dowry and keep turning down Pastor Richards’ marriage offers.”

“You’d kill him within half a year, if you had to live with him.”

Ada chuckled. “Half a year is too generous. I wouldn’t give him three months.” She started to rock anxiously, knees hugged to her chest. “This land will default to my father, if something happens. You, Corbley, and Ester have to take everything you can. I don’t know where you’ll go, but—”

“Carl, we’re not going anywhere, because you’re not dying.”

She snatched  a rock and threw it at him, missing by a good foot and a half. “Would you shut up for once in your goddamn life, Finnbar?” Her face flooded scarlet with rage. “God in Heaven, you’re insufferable. Ought to have killed you when I first met you, you’d have fetched just as good of a price as a corpse. Could have put that into buying more water tanks.”

James realized, with no small amount of dread, that as the venom affected her, Carl could very well reveal who he was to all the men there. He might be able to play it off as delusion, but then again—he might not. The Devil’s Tongue would do Aaron’s job for him.

“Alright, what is it you want me to do if something happens to you?”

“I fucking told you, didn’t I?  I need you to take care of Ester, keep her safe. Everything, all of this, it’s for her. Us.” Carl was agitated, yanking on the rope. “If I’m not here I can’t protect her, I need to know she’ll be okay.”

“If anything happens, I’ll make sure she’s safe. Her and Corbley both.”

That seemed to calm her, but she was still restless, and got to her feet to pace, stumbling several times and coming up short at the end of the rope. James kept just out of her reach, but close enough to grab her if she fell.

The men kept working, perhaps a little more frantically than they had before. James listened anxiously for the sound of a motor even though it would be far too soon for Jacobs’ to be returning with the doctor.

Carl was muttering prayers, or trying to, stumbling over the words, mixing up the lines. “Our Father… hallowed… who art in Heaven…”

It was an ugly way to die. There were very few people James would have said deserved it. He barely knew Carl, but he knew she didn’t deserve this.

He must not have been paying attention to how close he was, because Carl turned and seized his shirt, a wild look in her eyes. “The Devil is upon you, John.” It was so clear and sharp, her voice dropping slightly, and James jerked back his heart thundering against his ribs.

“Carl,” he said, his voice shakier than he would have liked, “Carl, it’s Finnbar—”

“I know who you are,” she snarled, jerking against the rope. “I know who you are, and I know what you did to her!”

Now that, he didn’t know what to do with.

Carl was raging, but whoever she thought he was, it wasn’t James Finnbar or John Metzger, either one. “You’re the reason she’s dead!”

He made a guess. “Your sister?”

“Becca loved you, and you took advantage of her.”

“I’ve never met your sister, Ada.” He spoke as gently as he could, trying to bring her back to reality, even though he suspected it was futile. “My name is James, Ada, James Finnbar, do you remember who I am?”

She looked lost. “Becca… oh, Becca, I’m sorry.” She covered her face with her hands, trembled.

Eventually, she couldn’t stand. She screamed and raved from the ground and all he could do was keep by her, prevent her from tangling the rope around her neck, and yell at the men to keep working. He couldn’t give less of a shit about the men, really.

The fear didn’t feel quite real, until she started coughing. It was an awful sound, low in her lungs, rattling in her chest.

James turned. “Where the fuck is Jacobs?”

The men didn’t have an answer, and James held Carl up at the shoulders, supporting her as she struggled to breathe.

Not knowing if it would do anything at all, he thumped a fist against the middle of her back, and Carl convulsed and coughed up a mass of thick yellowish bile into the weeds. She sucked down a lungful of air like someone just saved from drowning, limbs shaking, coughing temporarily abated, and finally, finally James heard the sound of a returning truck.

Boulos hit the ground at a run, physician’s bag in hand, and he must have had the syringe already prepared because in a moment he had pulled back the collar of Carl’s shirt and injected her. James heard him say something about he didn’t know if it would do anything at all, late as it was, that they should pray and get her back to town.

James pulled her to her feet, picked her up when she couldn’t stand. She was barely even conscious, but she was breathing, and for the moment that was what mattered. To Boulos, all he said was, “You do whatever it takes to keep her alive, or I swear to God you’ll be the first person I come for.”

#

They didn’t encounter any pedes, for which James supposed he ought to be grateful. They had to wait for Jacobs to return again to load up the last of the barrels, having harvested as much water as they could while still leaving the grove alive for the next time they would need it. “Any word?” James asked.

“No, sir, I came right back as soon as she was in Dr. Boulos’ care.”

There was a lot of silence, on the way back, though James supposed he wasn’t in the mood for conversation.

He had to walk to Boulos’ office, not quite allowing himself to think about what he might find.

A nurse stopped him at the door—a sturdy woman of middling height who looked prepared to use force if she had to. “Mr. Finnbar—”

“Where is she?” He looked over the woman’s head, but all the doors in the hall were closed.

“Sleeping,” the nurse said. “She has to recover.”

James paused. “But she will recover?”

“She will live,” the nurse said, carefully, “but we do not know how the venom will affect her in the long term. She seems to have lost a significant amount of vision, and that may or may not return.”

“When can I see her?”

“Miss Webb is looking after her, now. She has requested that you see to anything that needs her or Miss Carl’s attention for the rest of the day.”

“When can I see her?” James repeated, not willing to leave without an answer. He had to see with his own eyes that she was alright.

The nurse looked unamused. “When she asks for you, Mr. Finnbar, we will send for you.”

 


	11. We Shall Be Monsters

James spent a great deal of the next two days keeping himself busy, slipping rather too comfortably back into the role of commander. If anyone had suspected him to be nothing more than Carl’s convenient puppet, he soon disabused them of that notion, determined to keep the town in working order while its landowner convalesced.

As far as he knew, Webb was the only one allowed to see her, and with the exception of missives telling him to see to this or that thing, he heard from her not at all. He had no idea how Carl was doing, and it drove him up the wall with frustration.

He was on his way between houses when a boy he recognized as one of the nurses’ sons caught up to him. “Mr. Finnbar,” he said, catching James by the sleeve. “Miss Carl is asking for you.” 

James made the drive faster than he should have, and still when he walked through the door, the first thing Carl said was, “Took you long enough.”

He laughed a little, relieved that she was well enough to give him hell for being too slow.

Carl was sat against the headboard with pillows behind her back, her hair over her shoulders. If anything, seeing her hair down was what made the image of her poor health real. There were purple hollows under her eyes, which were glassy and unfocused. As if sensing the question in his silence, she said, “I can see a little better than when I first woke up, but you’re not much more than a shape and colors, right now. Boulos says he doesn’t know how much of my sight will come back.” She had her hands in her lap, laid flat against the cover of what appeared to be a very old book.

“How do you feel?” James asked, picking up a chair and bringing it to the bedside.

“Horrible, thanks for reminding me.” Her voice was tired. “Would you like to hear why I survived? I think it’s pretty funny, actually, but Ester didn’t agree.”

“Sure, tell me.” He watched her carefully, the way her eyes only lingered when she was trying very hard to make something out. At least she was conversational.

“My false lung. The fact that a pede almost killed me in the past saved me from suffocating this time.” She smiled. “The artificial lung couldn’t produce bile like the real one could. So clearing my airways certainly helped, but I wasn’t going to totally suffocate, anyway.” She thumbed the edge of the book. “I’m told that you stayed with me the whole time.”

“How much do you remember?”

“Not a lot.” She looked at him, or at least in his direction. “You asked about my sister.”

“Yes.” Not directly, but he supposed it didn’t make a difference to her.

“And I told you how she died.”

He nodded. “Yes.”

Carl gripped the sides of the book, a heavy quiet descending. “I haven’t talked about Becca in a long time.” She turned her face away. “What else did I say? When I was stark raving mad and screaming for everyone to hear?”

James drew in a breath. “You seemed to believe that I was someone who had hurt your sister.” When Carl said nothing, he went on. “You apologized to her. After that I… couldn’t really make sense of it, you seemed to be seeing devils, begging for forgiveness. You cried out for your mother—”

“That’s enough.” Carl lifted her face as if to stare at the ceiling. A little amused, she said, “You know, I’ve been hearing quite a lot about your particular… management style.”

“Oh?” He wondered who had told her, if people were complaining to Webb and Corbley.

“Some seem to be under the impression I hired a drill sergeant.” She laughed. “Which tells me I’ve gotten soft in the last few years, because they used to say that about me.”

James smiled. “How are you, really?”

“I’ve been better, Finnbar.” She closed her eyes. “I can’t see well enough to read, so to be quite honest, I’m bored out of my skull.”

James reached over to take the book from her hands. “Be careful with that,” Carl said, “that came with my family to the Settlement, before the Separation.”

“And how did you end up with it?” James asked, noting that the spine was deteriorating, and a great deal of the pages seemed to have been glued back in, over the years.

“I took it from my great-grandmother’s things, when she passed. Snuck it out while everyone else was arguing over her jewelry. It was her favorite book.” Carl rubbed at her hands, as if anxious that she didn’t have anything to hold on to, anymore. “The name in the cover, Natalie Carl, that’s my however-many-greats aunt. She’s the one that brought the book.”

“What’s it about?”

Carl smiled. “All the things you know, and you’ve never heard of _Frankenstein_?”

“Can’t say I have, no.” He leafed through the first few pages. The prose was antiquated, but not impossible. The paper was old, stained in some spots, the ink faded in places.

“You would like it, I think.” Carl shifted, fussing at the pillows. “You should read it. Take it, it’s impossible to get a digital copy these days. Too much questionable theological content.” She snorted. “If you damage it, though, I’ll have to kill you.”

“I can’t take this,” James said. It was too old, and too obviously precious to Carl.

“Well, then do me a favor and read it to me. I go through it about once every two years, I think it’s time for another read.” She shifted, making herself comfortable, sinking into the pillows. She looked… small. Worn. In a way that her voice would never have given away.

“You mustn’t take the ending too personally,” she said, abruptly. “It’s… rather bleak.”

“Delightful,” James said. “You still haven’t told me what it’s about.”

“Monsters, Mr. Finnbar. Monsters, and men who think they are not monsters.” She was gazing just past him. “As I said, I think you would like it.” 

#

On especially clear nights, Aaron could see the Earth-born station’s lights flickering above the Settlement.

Ships had come and gone over the last few decades, trying to re-establish contact. Without fail, the church had turned them all away, even going so far as to fire upon those that had approached without landing permission. Aaron was given to understand that they had sometimes landed in Kelchak territory, but no one had ever made it into the Covenant. In some respects, the Earth-borns seemed to avoid it as much as they wanted to approach.

They were afraid of what the colony had become.

The station was new. It had simply arrived in the planet’s orbit one day, all but finished, and fully crewed to observe the Covenant from a distance.

“It’s believed that they actually began construction during the war,” his companion was telling him. “We were simply too busy fighting on the ground to look up.”

“James had the ambition to take the war into the sky,” Aaron said, lighting his second cigarette of the evening. “Only thing that stopped us was we could never seem to find enough pilots to warrant stealing a ship.”

His companion laughed softly, running the one hand he still possessed back through his hair. “Metzger was always a man of ambitious ideas, wasn’t he?”

Aaron took a few steps across the roof, looking up at the station again. “And what about you, General? What are your ambitions?”

“Peace. Always has been.”

“How… noble.” Aaron put a hand in his jacket pocket. _“General_ Samuel Pierce. You made quite a name for yourself, fighting us. You were only, what—a Lieutenant, when we first met?”

Pierce was a big man, tall and broad. The sort of man that some years ago Aaron might have given a second glance to, had he not at the time been occupied with James. War had aged him considerably. He wore a trimmed beard, now, which had begun to gray at the chin. “I had just been promoted.” He watched Aaron carefully. “As I recall, that was also when you met my wife.”

Aaron chuckled at the memory. “How is Miriam, by the by?”

He hadn’t known who Miriam was, then, but James certainly had, a great deal better than he ought to have. Aaron had brought him along to the party as a friend. He hadn’t expected the rough fighter he picked up to know anyone there, least of all a Bishop’s Man’s wife. The pair had tried to pretend as if they had only just met, and Miriam might have done just fine, except that James couldn’t stop looking in her direction.

“She’s perfectly well.” Pierce was guarded at the topic of his wife, which would have been reasonable if he hadn’t been the one to bring her up.

“You should be proud of yourself, Pierce. It’s not everyone who can create the ideal Covenanter family. You sacrificed an arm for that family.” Aaron tried not to sneer too much on the word ‘ideal.’

Pierce sighed. “Why did you ask me here, Reyes?”

Aaron smiled, watching smoke curl away into the night sky. “Why do you think, General?”

Pierce was wary of him, which Aaron supposed was only natural, but it was a different kind of suspicion than he got from Stark. Pierce knew him too well, for that. Why fear the serpent when it was better to understand it?

“I’m given to understand you’re looking for Metzger, with Levi Stark.” Pierce tucked his one arm behind his back, in a mimicry of military posture, looking up at the Earth-born station again. “Stark is a good soldier, a good Christian. An admirable choice, for such a mission.”

“But he doesn’t know James,” Aaron said. “Not like you and I do.”

“I’d imagine there’s no one who knows Metzger like you do, Mr. Reyes.”

“Flattery isn’t your strong suit, General, although I appreciate the effort.” Aaron discarded the cigarette, put his hands in his pockets. “Stark fought heretics, sure. He chased our tail for years, killed our scouts. He fancies he knows how James thinks. But you and I both know it takes a great deal more than chasing heretical shadows to understand John Metzger, don’t we?”

He approached Pierce, but carefully. One arm or no, Aaron hadn’t the slightest doubt that Pierce would have him on the ground by his throat if he thought it necessary. “No one man in the whole Bishop’s Army ever came up against him as often as you did. No one man ever came as close to capturing him as you did.”

“You see, I know flattery is your strong suit, Mr. Reyes, and that is why the men don’t trust you.”

“I don’t need them to trust me, General, I need them to trust you.” Aaron smiled. “Because you know it isn’t flattery when I tell you that you understand James a great deal better than Levi Stark. You know when I’m telling the truth, where he’s concerned.”

Pierce chuckled. “Ah, I see. You want someone on your side.”

“I need someone on my side, if we’re going to find and capture James.” Aaron clasped his hands beside his back. “But that’s not all, General. Because you know why you, in particular, are an important element to this search, don’t you?”

Pierce was guarded again. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”

“I don’t think I have.” Aaron smiled. “I know righteous man fancy themselves above such things, but James fascinated you, didn’t he? He was a puzzle you just had to work out, for reasons you couldn’t even explain to yourself.”

Pierce stepped away from him, and Aaron let him, knowing that Pierce was listening, even he didn’t want to. “You see, you fascinated James,” Aaron said. “Drove me absolutely mad, but it was true. You, Samuel Pierce, you were always there. Don’t you think that James would risk a great deal, just to speak to you one last time?”

Pierce’s eyes glittered in the dark. “You think he would risk death?”

“I think he might.” Pierce was hooked, all that was left was to reel him in. “Consider it this way, General: right now, there is no one in the universe that James hates more than me. He would walk right into the lion’s maw just to spite me. You, though—you might be the one person who could convince him to seek forgiveness. And what would crush the future of his heresy more soundly than that?”

Pierce wasn’t looking at him.

“Martyrs are powerful figures, General. The last person I want to become one is Metzger. In that, I think we share an interest.”

“What would you have me do?”

Aaron had missed the feeling of triumph. “Accompany us. Persuade Stark, where he needs to be persuaded. And let it be known who you’re looking for. Word will reach him, and James Metzger will come to us.” 

#

Ada was fourteen, when she met Benjamin Webb. After the passing of her last tutor, her parents had arranged for her and Rebecca to be schooled with the Webb boy, as Mr. Ledford came highly recommended.

Mr. Ledford was fine.

Webb was unbearable.

“Maybe if you ever listened—”

“Listen to you ramble on about rules again? Ugh, why don’t you just shoot me in the head now.”

“Quiet, both of you!” Ledford had no patience for either of them, and Ada never knew why Mrs. Webb allowed the arrangement to continue, when her child must have complained of it constantly. Benjamin loathed Ada, and the feeling was well returned.

Safe Harbor was not overflowing with wealthy families. The Carls, the Webbs, and the Allans (who owned Safe Harbor) were really all there were, and the Allan children were being schooled in the Settlement.

If Ada had to pick any one reason that she needled at Benjamin, it was because her mother had made it evident she hoped they would someday marry, and solidify the Carl and Webb fortunes. (Ada had a suspicion she meant for Rebecca to marry one of the Allan boys, in some hope that if the Carl name could not continue in Safe Harbor, then at least the line would be secured in the proper places in society.)

She complained about Benjamin to Moira so frequently that Moira had started asking after her “stuffy schoolmate,” the “aspiring lawyer.” “Oh, not a lawyer,” Ada mocked, “Benjamin Webb wants to be doctor. Ha! If I were Dr. Webb’s patient, I’d kill myself.”

“What’s a rich boy want to be a doctor for?” Moira asked. “Ain’t the Webbs own half the businesses in town?”

Ada shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t care. We only have to share a tutor because father didn’t want to bring anyone in from out of town.”

The worst came when Rebecca was sick, and Ada was left alone with Benjamin. The task they had been assigned required the shared use of books, hunched over a table in her father’s study. If she didn’t already dislike Benjamin enough, it was only amplified by her dislike for her father’s study, which was always cold and too dark, and was the place where as a child she had been switched for misbehaving.

All together it made her tense, and prone to snapping. “I don’t want the damned book, Webb, I want to be done!”

“You would be done, if you had just taken it when I offered it to you earlier!” Benjamin was close to losing his temper with her again, and not one to be miserable on her own, Ada decided to push just a little harder.

“Maybe if you pulled that stick out of your ass, being around you wouldn’t be so damned unbearable.”

“Why do you always talk like you just crawled out of a gutter?” Benjamin spit back. “No wonder your parents want to keep you occupied with school—otherwise you’d be down on the docks with the other whores.”

Ada lunged across the table, grabbing handfuls of Benjamin’s shirt as he tried to reel back. She dragged him forward, her blood snarling through her heart. “Say it again, Webb, I fucking dare you,” she hissed, their face inches apart.

“Let me go.” Benjamin was trying to sound calm, but his voice wavered.

“When you apologize, I’ll consider it.” Ada would have liked nothing better than to put the fear of God into him, to make him regret ever speaking to her at all.

“Go to hell.”

“I’ll just take you with me.”

The door opened behind them, and Ledford didn’t even sound surprised. “For the love of God, Miss Carl, Mr. Webb, can you both behave like civilized human beings for one day?”

Ada remained convinced that there was nothing to do but wait until her schooling was complete, and from there, she would combat any marriage arrangements her mother might make with tooth and nail. If she had any solace at all, it was knowing Webb would likely be fighting them with equal resistance.

The first time an uneasy peace settled over their interactions was when Benjamin’s father died. He was gone from lessons for some time, and when he returned he was very quiet. Ada didn’t speak to him much, except once to offer her condolences, and thereafter only such requests as to pass a book or a pen.

When she went to give condolences a second time, during a lengthy silence in the Webb library, all he said was, “Don’t. I’m relieved he’s gone.”

Ada was startled into silence for a moment, and then she only said, “Well, good. Because I’m jealous.”

Benjamin glanced at her, equally surprised, but Ada turned away before he could ask any questions.

“And how’s the aspiring doctor?” Moira would ask, when next Ada saw her.

“Hmph.”

“Oh? Did something happen?”

“Lucky bastard’s father died.” Ada sulked over the half-glass of some fruity drink she had been given, the one indulgence Moira would allow her.

“I don’t know that it sounds lucky,” Moira said.

“It is if you find out he’s glad his dad’s gone, and mine’s still kicking.” She slumped over the table. “Anyway, I can’t say anything to him now. It’s like I have to wait for him to pick the first fight so I know it’s okay to—” Her eyes caught on someone coming through the door, a girl standing awkwardly in a purple dress, looking like she didn’t quite know what to do with herself.

A girl who looked an awful lot like Benjamin Webb.

She didn’t see Ada at first, making her way inside and wringing her hands, anxious.

“Has she ever been here before?” Ada asked Moira.

“Hm? No, don’t reckon I’ve seen her.” Moira shrugged, and smiled. “Why? You like her?”

The girl turned, and her gaze found Ada. Her eyes went wide and she stood paralyzed for a moment, staring at Ada in her boy’s clothes, and Ada staring back, knowing in her gut just exactly who she was looking at.

The girl turned as if to leave, and Ada bolted to her feet. “Webb, wait!”

She froze at her name, and Ada came around to put herself between her and the door. They stared at each other for a long, tense moment. Ada found her tongue again and nodded at the table where Moira was sitting. “I’ve, uh, I’ve got some friends here, if you want to join us.”

“Thanks, I’d rather go home.” She tried to step to the door and Ada stepped in her way again.

“It’s awful lonely, don’t you think?” Ada said. “Just stay for a drink. Moira only gives me half drinks, anyway.”

She wavered, glancing back at the table where Moira was now talking to Abbie, an arm around her hips. “I—just one,” she said, sounding uncertain.

“Great,” Ada said, not sure that it was actually great at all. “And, uh—what should I call you?”

Webb looked back at her, and as if they were meeting for the first time, she extended her hand. “Ester,” she said, “Ester Webb.”

Ada clasped her hand, relaxing a little with a smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Ester.”

#

“God-damned fool,” Corbley muttered. “Should have had Boulos there in the first place. Ain’t she gotten tired of tryin’ to get herself killed?”

Ester sighed and rubbed at her face. “Did you know she’s finally promised me she’ll stop going on all the most dangerous missions?”

Corbley glanced at her. “Think she’ll do it?”

“It’s taken years to get a promise out of her, I like to think she means it.” She handed Corbley the payroll. “Doesn’t Finnbar usually do this with you?”

“Carl sent for him again, haven’t seen him since.” Corbley rolled his eyes. “Feels guilty, I guess.”

Ester scoffed. “Lord deliver me from fools who want to take every injury themselves. No wonder they get along the way they do.” She shook her head, and fanned herself with her hat. “Do you know what they do, when she sends for him?”

“Finnbar never sticks around long enough for me to ask,” Corbley grumbled.

“He reads to her.” Ester felt irritated for a reason she couldn’t quite name, except maybe that people talked, and expected her to indulge their gossip. “All the people in this town who could read for her, and she sends for him.”

Corbley eyed her carefully. “You ain’t jealous, are ya? Because that’d be stupid.”

“No, I’m not, I—” Ester gave a frustrated sigh. “This is Mattie all over again. She always needs something to fix. Some dog with a bum leg she just has to help, even if it’s going to bite her.”

“Finnbar ain’t gonna bite.”

“Maybe not purposefully,” Ester allowed, “but he has the smell of the feral on him, and you never know how that will manifest. Never mind whatever will come chasing his scent.” 

#

Her full name was Mary Josephine Finnbar, but neither her mother or grandmother had ever called her by her first name. It was always Josephine, or when her mother was being affectionate, “Josie” or “Jo.”

It would have been easy to assume that she had known very little about her uncle until the war broke out, that her mother and grandmother would have quietly closed the book on him, tried to forget the past.

It also would have been entirely wrong.

She had grown up with the ghost of ‘Uncle Jamie,’ as she had been raised to know him. In every story of her mother’s childhood, in every quiet evening after church when her grandmother thought on his departure, in every foolhardy, stubborn thing Josephine ever did when her mother would announce she was “just like Jamie.” He shadowed her, a man she knew only in the scant few pictures that her grandmother had.

A tall young man, not quite yet grown into his limbs, with a shy and good-natured smile. He wasn’t so much taller than her mother, but over her grandmother he towered, and hunched forward almost as if to make his height less noticeable.

She had heard so many stories that she had used to imagine his returning, having made his fortune or coming back from some grand adventure. He was still young, when she imagined him, and though she had been born some eight months after he left, he always knew who she was.

It was a silly daydream, one that embarrassed her to recall.

As she had grown older, she had learned to associate her uncle with things less desirable than mystery and adventure.

She resented him. For the pain he had caused her mother and grandmother, for the presence he had assumed in her own upbringing, for his continued absence.

She hated him. For the war, for all the misery and chaos that came with it.

For the fact that she knew he was not her uncle.

It would have been one thing, to know that her mother raised her as an adopted child to play the line of respectability. Her wetnurse, the story of the birthmother who could not care for her—that all made perfect sense, as part of a lie. A lie Josephine would have been content to believe.

Her mother had always had a weakness for alcohol. For that reason neither she nor her grandmother kept it in the house, but sometimes, after a particularly bad time, a few bottles would find their way to her mother’s room, and sometimes Josephine found her that way, just drunk enough to say things she shouldn’t.

At first, it had just seemed like another meaningless story about her uncle, that he had had an affair with Miriam Hall. (She was Mrs. Pierce, now, Josephine had met her a few times, and found her a cold, distant woman.) “I warned him,” her mother said, her speech slurred. “Warned him he wasn’t doing any good. For him or her. Then—after he got thrown out—she comes to me. All afraid and ‘won’t you help me,’ ‘don’t have anyone else I can go to.’”

Some fear Josephine couldn’t name had blossomed in her heart. “Momma, I think you ought to rest—”

“We went away for a while. Halls own land in the country, a nice house out there, but hardly ever used. Then she went off and married her Bishop’s Man… and I came back with you.”

It was two years into the war, when she learned that. She had spoken very little of it, since then. Her mother knew that she knew, but Josephine had no desire to give voice to the words, to allow it any more reality in her life than absolutely necessary.

Knowing all the things that people had whispered behind her mother’s back, knowing the reason for the pitying and suspicious looks they received at church, she hated him even more for that. For the fact that her mother took it all without complaint, for the sake of Miriam Pierce and her four legitimate children. For the fact that it was better for Josephine to be a whore’s daughter than a heretic’s.

“I trust you found there was nothing suspicious in our correspondences,” Josephine said when Levi Stark returned with the drive she had given to Mr. Reyes.

“You would be correct, Miss Finnbar, I apologize for troubling you.” Stark was giving her rather too appreciative an eye, and Josephine wondered if it was her looks, or the money suggested by her grandmother’s home.

“It was no trouble. I understand why the church must investigate every possible avenue.” She took the drive, tucked it into her pocket. “However, my mother will not be eager to see you again, so I think I should not hold you up any longer.” She smiled politely, and gestured the door. Some days, she could muster the energy to make a man leave without ever noticing he had been rebuffed, but she did not care enough to make the effort for Stark.

He looked somewhat surprised. “Of course, of course.” He hesitated, and gave her what she was sure was meant to be a charming smile. “If it’s not too forward, I wouldn’t mind seeing you again, Miss Finnbar.”

Lord deliver her. “I’m flattered, Mr. Stark,” she replied, “but I fear you would find me a cold companion, and I place my mother’s peace of mind above any man.” She stepped to the door, and opened it. “Goodbye, Mr. Stark.”

He seemed affronted. “Goodbye, Miss Finnbar.”

She breathed easier, once the door was closed.

There was a soft chuckle from the stairs. “Leah would be stunned to hear that you regard her peace of mind so highly.”

“Grandma,” Josephine said, turning, “I didn’t know you were there.”

Her grandmother held the banister, her cane gripped in her other hand. “I thought it best I keep an eye on you. Lest I had to call for a houseman.” She gestured Josephine to come up the stairs to her. “For all that I have tied to instill the behaviors of a proper woman in you and your mother, there is a proud streak in both of you. I suppose I’m pleased, against my better judgment. There are times when grace is insufficient.” She laid a hand on Josephine’s arm. “You have been unhappy, since Mr. Reyes came to see us.”

Josephine looked away. “I just wish they wouldn’t badger us like this. I wish the past could stay in the past.”

“You are unhappy with your mother and I, then.”

“No, Grandma, it’s only—” She didn’t have the words, to say what she wanted to say.

Her grandmother squeezed her arm. “I need to tend to the garden. I would like your help.”

“Yes, Grandma.” Josephine helped her down the stairs, a deep feeling of melancholy hanging heavy in her bones. Her grandmother said it was a family trait, that sometimes such despondencies ran in families, and she suspected that such was the case with Leah and Josephine.

“When you were a little girl,” her grandmother said, “I wondered often on how things might have been different, if James were here.” Her fingers tightened on Josephine’s arm. “I know you don’t want to speak of him, but this one thing I do have to tell you.” She took a moment to gather her words. “I only knew him for a little while, but he was so determined to be good.  To do right by everyone.”

Josephine had heard this before, this singing of virtues for a man that had assaulted a priest and abandoned his family.

“I always wondered what he would have done if he had been here, if Miriam had come to him.” It was the first time she had heard her grandmother acknowledge the truth of the situation. It made her want to squirm, to pull away and run back to the comfort of a lie. “She wouldn’t have married him. Whatever she found in their relationship, I know that much. She had a comfortable life ahead of her, she wouldn’t have jeopardized that for him. He wouldn’t have been happy with her, anyway.”

Her grandmother let out a breath. “But you… I find myself believing he would have adored you. Spoiled you terribly, I’m sure, but his heart would have been in the right place.”

“Grandma—”

“I’m only telling you this because I know you hate to speak of him. Whatever it is you feel about him, that is your right, I cannot ask you to feel any differently. But I firmly believe that he stayed away as he did because he believed it the right thing to do. Perhaps he even believed we were better off without him.”

They stood a moment in the entrance of the garden, a light breeze stirring the leaves. “Just as I believe,” her grandmother said softly, “that he was driven to war because he believed he was doing the right thing for all of us.”

It would have been easier, to let it go—but her mother hadn’t raised her to let things go. “And the things he did? All the awful things done in his name?”

Her grandmother looked at her. “You would have to ask him about that, but I can tell you one thing—war is a devil of its own. Whether it begins nobly or not, it corrupts everything, makes monsters out of people who just want to survive. You and your mother both—too young to remember the last war. It would have happened when she was very small. Rebellion, I suppose the church calls it. It began because of poverty and hunger and a neglect of the sick. It barely lasted a year, but it was hard. Very hard.”

Her grandmother let go of her arm, making her way out into the garden. “I met my husband during that war. Young doctor, in need of extra hands, and all I wanted to do was find some way to help—so, we made quite a comfortable pair. You learn quickly, when the living person under your hands depends on it.” She bent to pinch withered flower heads from the stems. “Whatever war makes of them, most men die the same. They die afraid.” She cradled the dead flowers in her hand. “I suppose if I had known what the future held, I would have told him that.”

“I don’t see what this has to do with my uncle’s crimes, Grandma.”

“No, I suppose you don’t.” Her grandmother smiled sadly. “Nor will the church, when they find him.” She scattered the dead flowers in the flowerbed, and turned her face up to the sunlight. “They told us of James’ crimes in great detail. Do you know what the church never told us, Josephine?”

“What, Grandma?”

“What the church did. The Bishop’s Men, yes, but the preachers and statesmen, too. Have you the faintest notion what’s happened to the heretics they’ve captured since the war ended?”

“No.” It wasn’t like her grandmother to talk like this, to speak openly against the church.

“Neither do I. War corrupts everything, Josephine. They tell us James did terrible things, and likely he did—but I assure you, he was not alone in them.” She smiled a little, though Josephine couldn’t imagine why. “When I met my husband, he was employed by the Bishop’s Men. Me, though—I was one of the rebels.” 

#

The first time James met Aaron, he had blood running down his face.

It was about five years since he had last seen Leah, since he had been branded. He had spent a lot of time wandering, following construction work and whatever other money he could make, sleeping wherever rain wouldn’t fall on him and a meal might be found. He learned the hard way to get a sense for who could be trusted, and who would rob him blind at the first opportunity.

And when he could find a ring that would take him, he would fight. It was better money than he made building houses or shops, and generally more easily won. It was fighting that kept a roof over his head, more than anything else. The name James Finnbar might have stayed in the Settlement, but Lazarus had come with him, even when he knocked men down a great deal more often than he was knocked down himself.

At the time he was in a city by the name of Paradise, which failed to live up to its name in nearly every conceivable way.

Aaron Reyes was nothing more than a twenty year old stripling of a young man, as lightly built as a lapdog, with a smile sharp enough to bleed on.

He came to the ring to gamble, always surrounded with people. He stank of power and money, and he gave of the latter just freely enough to fool others into thinking him generous. He commanded his entourage with the surety of someone who believed he was owed their attention, and being around him was like looking down from a great height, and fighting the urge to jump.

So, bloodied and sore and looking forward to collecting his winnings, James pulled himself out of the ring, and was surprised to find Aaron waiting for him. He was almost a half foot shorter than James, and God only knew how much lighter, but his presence and that damned, glittering smile stopped James short. “Ruthless, aren’t you?” He purred, stepping a little closer. “I made quite a tidy sum, betting on you.”

James took half a step back. He must have looked like hell, with a bloody nose and a half-healed bruise from his last fight, but from the way Aaron looked at him, none of that was an obstacle.

Aaron laughed. “What’s the matter? Shy?”

“Just afraid of getting blood on your jacket.” He was dressed too nicely to be in a place like that. He stuck out from everyone else in the crowd. But maybe, James thought, that was why he came.

Aaron flashed that smile again. “I’ve got a dozen more just like it. Even I I didn’t, I might make the risk for you.”

James was flustered, and Aaron latched onto his bashfulness with a sort of glee, bold enough to put a hand on James’ arm. “Do you want to go for drinks, later? I know the best place on Rose Street.”

Rose Street was where all the queer bars were. James had visited a few of them, since he arrived in Paradise, but he always felt awkward and out of place—as if everyone else knew what they were doing, and he was the only country hick who didn’t know what to do with himself. “Sure. Just let me get cleaned up.”

“If you insist,” Aaron said.

He washed over a cracked and rust-stained sink, blood swirling away down the drain as the place quieted down. He only became aware of how old and worn his shirt was when he returned to find Aaron waiting for him, lounging on a narrow bench, sans retinue. “Thought we might get along better with fewer hangers-on,” he said, jumping up to loop an arm through James’. “Shall we go? It’s my treat.”

He brought James to a car, with a driver that looked entirely disinterested. “He’ll let us out a few blocks away,” Aaron said, leaning in close enough that James could smell his cologne, likely more expensive than a year of James’ rent. “What do you drink?”

“When someone else is paying, I’m not picky.”

James could feel Aaron’s smile more than he saw it. “You don’t do this often, do you?”

“No.” James was too embarrassed to say anything more. It wasn’t the first time he had done something like this, but he could still count on his hands the number of times he had.

“Well, fear not,” Aaron murmured. “I’ll keep you safe.”

James wouldn’t remember anything of what he said, later, but he learned that Aaron had been in Paradise for about half a year, sent to live with his mother’s cousin so that her family could find him a wife. “None of my brothers were married off so fast, I think my parents have some concerns about me.” He grinned.

Half a year, he had been there, and apparently he was a familiar face at the bar he took James to, because several people greeted him by name, with varying degrees of like or dislike—the difference didn’t seem to matter to Aaron, who relished the attention, and in particular the attention that James’ presence brought. Most didn’t know him, or if they did, they knew him as a fighter, not the sort of man they would usually see on Rose Street, being pulled along by someone like Aaron.

It might also been because he looked like hell.

He was off-balance, not sure what to make of Aaron and his crimson jacket, the thick dark hair that was just a little longer than a respectable young man would wear it. Long enough to tangle his fingers in, James thought, and had to fight the urge to reach up and find out.

Aaron looked back at him, eyes glittering. “If you want my honest opinion,” he said, “the only thing here worth drinking is the whiskey.”

“Whiskey it is, then.” He wasn’t much for drinking, all told, but he was rapidly approaching the need to soothe his nerves even a little. Given too much space to think ahead, his mind would run circles around itself.

“You’re so quiet,” Aaron marveled over his glass. “Or don’t you have anything to say about yourself?”

“I’m afraid you wouldn’t find it very interesting.”

“I think you’re wrong,” Aaron replied. “Tell me.”

“Tell you what?” James asked, smiling.

“Everything. Absolutely everything.”

What surprised James was how much time they did spend just talking, just enough alcohol in him to hum against the inside of his skull and make him forget that he was out of his element, and to dull the way his insides fluttered when Aaron was close enough to murmur in his ear, that smile turned in almost against James’ neck. “Have you got a place?”

“Yeah, but it’s not what you’re used to, I’d bet.” Aaron’s shoulder was flush against his, that nice jacket against his old and worn shirt.

“Doesn’t matter,” Aaron said, “I won’t be looking at the room.”

“Should we go?”

“Yes. Now.” Aaron flashed a smile, dazzling bright. “We’ve got to walk, it’d be better for you if my driver couldn’t report back where you live.”

It started to rain while they walked, a heavy rain that made Aaron’s curls stick to the side of his face and the shirt under his jacket cling to his skin. They dripped water in the entrance of James’ boarding house, so late that there were no lights on. In the dim light, James pressed a finger to his lips, and Aaron giggled, following him closely up the stairs.

The door had hardly shut behind them but that James had Aaron pressed up against it, kissing the rain from his face, hands pressed to either side of the door. Aaron yanked at his shirt, hard enough to send buttons skittering into the dark corners of his room, where he would have to find them later.

For a first encounter that he didn’t know the significance of at the time, what James remembered came in pieces that only suggested a greater whole: wet fabric under his hands, cold skin that quickly warmed pressed against his own, impossibly soft sounds coming from that razor of a mouth, the damp press of the pillow, and most of all Aaron’s hair, tangled around his fingers.

“What did you say your name was, again?” Aaron asked in the breathless dark afterward, his fingertips tracing lines down James’ chest.

“James,” he murmured. “My name is James Metzger.”

“James,” Aaron repeated, as if trying it out. His name sounded different, when it came out of Aaron’s mouth. Sweetened, somehow. “I think I’m going to like you very much, James Metzger.”


	12. I Shall Not Want

Ada stood on the stoop of Boulos’s office, shielding her eyes against the sun and the clear, cloudless sky. The town lay under a gauzy haze in her vision, everything blurred at the edges. She still had a cough, and nightmares had started to trouble her, but a week had passed and for the most part, she had recovered remarkably well, for something that ought to have killed her.

But there was still no rain.

She leaned on the rail, glad to be back in her own clothes, permitted to stand and move about. Boulos said if her vision did not improve in the next few weeks, he would look into finding an optometrist, to see if corrective lenses might help.

“He’s done admirably, hasn’t he?” she asked, looking at Corbley. Since she had last seen him, he had developed the beginnings of spines, not much more than an inch or so long, and he was yet a little taller, showing in the somewhat improved fit of his clothes. His coloring had started to shift as well, yellowing along the center of his face and head.

Corbley looked at her, skeptical. “You didn’t call me here to talk about that, now, did ya?”

Ada looked away, toward the riverbed. “I hear singing.”

“That’ll be Webb’s pray-out,” Corbley said.

“She convinced Richards?” That was a feat in and of itself. Richards was the sort of preacher who only liked to do things that were safely within the church’s approval.

“Yeah, she must have forgotten to tell ya.”

More likely, Ada thought, Ester wanted her to rest, and not worry herself over the town. “I’d like to see it. What I can see, anyway.”

“You sure?”

“I haven’t been out of this building since I was put in it. I want to do something, Corbley.” She pulled her hat onto her head. “And praying for rain seems like a damn good thing to do, right now.”

Corbley offered her an arm, and Ada sighed taking it, squinting against the fog in her vision. “How long has it been going on?”

“’Bout an hour. Just getting warmed up, I imagine.” Corbley took her down the steps and into the street, guiding her around the holes in the road. “Richards started off with a reading, ‘He leads me to cool waters’ or somethin’ like that.”

“That’s not the Psalm at all, you’re terrible at this,” Ada teased. “It’s still waters, first of all.”

“Have you seen how long that book is?” Corbley asked. “I ain’t got the time for that.”  

“What do the Kelchak have then?” Ada asked. “Or don’t you have religion?”

“We have more’n I could tell you about,” Corbley replied. “But you’ll find more of most in songs than in books.”

“I’ve never heard you sing.”

Corbley shrugged. “One Kelchak is nothing, you wanna hear a group. All together, voices up—that’ll make ya believe in the holy.” He laid a rough hand over hers, mindful not to scratch her. “All due respect—but your churches got nothin’ on us.”

Ada laughed, squeezing Corbley’s arm. “You never heard the choir at my church in Safe Harbor. Now that was something.” Rebecca had used to sing in the choir, before.

Seemed like half the town was in the riverbed. Ada had ordered the mine closed for the season, because the floods could come at any time, and because working men required more water than idle men. She could see people dancing, though she couldn’t make out who, faces turned to the sky and their voices raised to Heaven. There was music, too, she could see a group on the riverbank, with their instruments.

“I’ll sit here,” Ada said, wanting to keep her distance. She didn’t want everyone to notice her at once, to flood her with questions and well-wishes. Telling her that they had been praying for her.

Ada put her arms over her knees, watching the dark shapes against the red dust. It was probably beautiful.

“Miss Carl?”

She looked up, squinting at the face of the young man asking her name. “You’ll have to forgive me, I can’t see very well right now—Abe Cole, is that you?”

Abe rubbed at the back of his neck. “I just wanted to tell ya that—I’m doin’ better now, Miss.”

Ada let the words hang in the air a moment, and she nodded. “I’m glad to hear it, Mr. Cole. How’s your mother?”

“She’s—having a hard time, still.” Abe put his hands in his pockets. “Pastor Richards has been by, more often. She prays a lot.”

“I pray a lot, too,” Ada said, looking back to the riverbed. “More than I think I have a right to, sometimes.”

“You survived a Devil’s Tongue, Miss,” Abe said, “the Lord must be listenin’.”

Ada couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her. If the Lord was listening to her prayers now, He ought to listen a little more carefully. “You should go down with the others,” she said, “I’m afraid I’m not much for talking, right now. It was good to see you, Mr. Cole.”

Abe tipped his hat. “And you, Miss.”

“Mr. Cole,” she said, as he started to leave. “You should go say hello to Angelica Perkins. She missed you at church.”

She couldn’t see well enough to tell if Abe’s face was embarrassed as the sudden shift in his posture, but he nodded. “Yes’m. I will.”

Ada smiled. They would be a sweet pair, if anything came of it. She had certainly seen worse matches.

Corbley sat next to her, hands on his knees. “I wanna ask you somethin’, as your friend.”

“Yeah?”

“If somebody comes looking for Finnbar, finds him here—what’re you gonna do?” Corbley’s voice was low, and Ada closed her eyes against her blurred vision. “Covenant’s only so big. Bishop’s Men’re bound to come this way eventually.”

Being an invalid had given her a great deal of space to reflect on this problem particularly. To imagine it a hundred ways, trying to identify as many unknown factors as she could. As far as she could tell, the biggest danger was Reyes, but without asking Finnbar directly, she had to rely on what she knew of Reyes’ reputation.

Her advantage, then, was that—rebaptized or not—Reyes was a known heretic. Ada had no crimes against the church. Were she required to appear before a court, it would be easy enough to wear a dress, to select the townspeople most sympathetic to her, and to Finnbar, as witnesses. Paint herself as a model, if headstrong, Christian woman, with a deep sense of justice.

And there was one thing, one failsafe that Ada was sure she had. “Pastor Richards will give him sanctuary.”

Corbley didn’t scoff outright, which Ada was grateful for. “And why would Richards do that?”

“Because I will ask it of him. Because, if it comes to that, I will grant him his church, if he does. And reveal to him what I know he’s hiding from.”

“A bribe and a threat,” Corbley said.

“A carrot and a stick,” Ada replied. It was sacred law. If the church were to defy sanctuary, it would instantly begin the war anew, and fracture the Covenant to its very core. That was a risk that the church would be very reluctant to take, even for Finnbar.

“They’ll be accusin’ you of conspiring with heretics, for shieldin’ him.”

“I may not be a lawyer, Mr. Corbley,” Ada said, “but I can argue scripture a great deal better than you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Ada opened her eyes and gazed past the riverbed, to the blurred forest beyond. “It means I’m working on it.” Her vision caught on something big and dark and moving. She caught Corbley’s arm. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

Corbley looked, and she felt him bristle in the half-second before he leapt to his feet, hollering fit to raise the Devil out of Hell. “There’s a pede! Everyone get under cover there’s a God-damned pede!” He dragged Ada to her feet, claws tearing her shirtsleeves as chaos erupted in the riverbed.

The pede was of middling size, as far as Ada could tell, but to show itself in the open, when so many people were out, making so much noise—that was very, very bad.

“Get yourself inside,” Corbley told her, shoving her towards the town, “there ain’t no need to get yourself killed now.”

“Ada!” Ester came out of the crowd, grabbed her by the hand. “Come with me.”

Ada tightened her hand around Ester’s relieved at least to be anchored, and followed her into the town, feeling very much like she was running like a coward.

#

Few things were more dangerous than a panicked crowd, but James imagined the water-starved pede rapidly approaching the town might be up there.

He was loading a rifle when Micah caught up to him, catching him by the arm. “What are you doing?”

James startled. “I could ask you the same question.” They had never spoken outside of the brothel, and now seemed like an extremely poor time to start.

“That thing is going to kill you.” Micah was pale, frantic, and James did not have time to reassure him.

“It’ll kill more than just me if it’s not taken care of.” He shrugged off the hand on his arm. “Get under cover, you don’t need to get hurt.”

“James—”

“Go!” James barked, and Micah startled back. He gave James a frightened look, and turned on his heel to make for cover. James pulled in a breath, making his way back to the riverbed at a run. He had seen Webb pulling Carl along, and was glad at least that they were both out of harm’s way for the moment.

Corbley and a few other men crouched on the riverbank, firing at the pede from a distance. It seemed to be deterring the pede for now, but the beast wasn’t retreating, only raising the front half of its body into the air, bullets striking ineffectually against its thick shell, hissing and clicking.

“Hey, sharp-shooter,” Corbley said, “think you can get an eye from here?”

There was no wind, his shot was clear. “I can try.”

“Well don’t fuckin’ wait for an invitation,” Corbley replied. “Even if you can’t kill it, it’ll be less dangerous blind.”

The pede dropped its body back to the ground just as James raised the rifle to his shoulder. He followed it to the head, lining the sights, finger hovering over the trigger.

“God in Heaven,” someone said, “there’s a kid out there.”

James raised his head, spying the boy crouched still as stone along the far side of the riverbank, hiding. He must have wandered from the pray-out, and not been able to get back to town with the rest—and James knew, without any doubt in his mind, that it was Henry Randall.

The pede had scented him. It was low to the ground, hunting.

James took aim, and fired.

The rifle kicked against his shoulder and the pede snarled at the impact to its head, but he had missed the eye. He had at best distracted it—more likely enraged it. A second time—he saw the eye burst, heard the pede scream—but the beast wouldn’t die and now it was snaking its way towards the exact place where Henry was hiding.  

James broke into a sprint down the riverbank. He would put himself between the pede and Henry, and he would put a bullet in the damn thing’s brain, one way or another.

Corbley was shouting at him but James was already leveraging himself up the far bank. It wasn’t war but it felt almost the same. The pede saw him and turned, bristling, body coiling to attack.

Then Henry broke and ran. The pede whirled, snarling. James caught up to Henry, pulled him down into the weeds and whirled to bring the rifle to his shoulder when something surged up over the side of the riverbank, long and dark and serpent-like.

Hanasut hit the ground on all fours, spines fanned out around her head and flushed brilliant yellow, rattling as she hissed, challenging the pede in an animal way that it would understand. The pede snapped at her, and James steadied the rifle to take a shot—

—and it jammed.

Hanasut rose up to her full height and the pede began to coil for the lunge again, its legs striking the ground like hammer blows. James fumbled with the rifle, sharp, cold fear buried in his gut.

Three shots cracked through the air one after the other, and the pede reeled and dropped, falling over into death spasms, legs spinning through the empty air and scraping swaths of dry weeds down to the dirt.

At James’ side, Henry trembled.

Carl stood on the bank, her breath heaving, arm extended with her pistol in her hand, her sleeve hanging in tattered ribbons. She dropped to her knees in the weeds, and looked back at James. “If I hadn’t just saved your life, Finnbar,” she said, “I’d kill you for that stunt.”

#

Aaron took no small amount of delight in the way Stark fumed after Pierce announced he was joining the hunt. Stark had already been in a foul mood following, from what Aaron gathered, being rejected by the Finnbar woman, and the lower Levi Stark’s mood sank the higher Aaron felt.

“You’re gloating,” Pierce said when Stark stormed out of the narrow ante room.

“Of course I am. It’s the first victory I’ve had since you captured James on the far side of Devil’s Canyon.” Aaron leaned against a near desk, smiling. “I was quite proud of my rescue mission. Of course, had I felt then the way I feel now, I’d have let you keep him.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” Pierce said. “You couldn’t bargain if he was captured before you turned traitor.” He reached a hand up to his beard, looking at the room. “This is unacceptable. We’ll need better working conditions than this, if we’re to find Metzger.”

“Perhaps a renowned war hero could attain those better conditions for us?” Aaron said, a smile curling like burning paper on his lips.

Pierce laughed softly. “Perhaps.” He gave Aaron an amused look. “I’m beginning to think you’re only using me, Mr. Reyes.”

“Never only, General.” Aaron pushed away from the desk, going over to a map on the wall. “I was just telling Stark, since the Finnbars were a dead end, we ought to get moving before the wet season sets in.”

“Where to?” Pierce asked.

Aaron could find the place on the map almost without looking, striking a finger to the almost unnoticeable dot. “Janesville.”

“What’s Janesville to Metzger?”

“Place of his birth and upbringing, place where his parents are buried,” Aaron looked at Pierce, “Place where his sister Hannah still lives. She’s all that remains of the family in Janesville, I’d guess. Had three sons last James heard anything about it, and he was terribly soft on them. All grown men by now, I imagine, and all worth investigating.”

“Stark’s report seems to indicate that Mrs. Finnbar thought it unlikely Metzger would return to a family home.”

“The conditions of James’ exiting the Settlement were a special circumstance,” Aaron replied, “and all due respect to Mrs. Finnbar, but I knew James ten times as long as she did. Even if he hasn’t sought out his kin, we’d be fools not to look.”

“Fair enough,” Pierce allowed, “when was the last time he saw his sister?”

“A few years before the war,” Aaron said. “He only went back to Janesville because word finally caught up to him that his father was dead.” Aaron remembered how quiet James had been when he found the years-old obituary in some archive. Not sad, exactly, but not relieved, either. For three days, he hardly spoke. After that, it was as if he had simply put the thought of his father away, and announced that he was going to see his sister’s family. James hadn’t asked Aaron to go with him, but he had anyway.

He hadn’t quite realized, until he went to Janesville, just how James had grown up. The house in which he had been born was long-since sold, but even with its new owners, it was little more than some thin boards held together with prayer. If his sister’s house was any better, it was only because her family lived above the shop her husband owned. Too small a space, for that many children, and their mother worn and prematurely aged, her features softened with weight, but she had seemed happy to see James, and eager to convince him to stay. She had a friend, she said, who she thought would be a good match for him.

“Mr. Reyes?”

Pierce’s voice shook him out of the memory. “Sorry, did I miss something?”

“No, only it seemed like you were no longer in the room with me.” Pierce was looking at the map again. “What’s the sister’s name, again?”

“Hannah Sato. Husband’s Noah Sato. I don’t remember their sons’ names anymore but they should be easy enough to find, it’s not a big town.”

“We should see what we can find on them before we depart,” Pierce said. “I prefer to know what I’m getting into.”

“Well, if you insist on taking the surprise out of things,” Aaron said.

The corner of Pierce’s mouth pulled up in a smile. “Surprises are for those who’ve never fought a war.” He smoothed his hand down the front of his uniform, all those shiny buttons twinkling in the dim light. “I’ll see about improving our accommodations. If that’s all, Mr. Reyes?”

“You should join me for dinner sometime, General,” Aaron said. “The cook is quite accomplished, and my mother would be honored to have such a distinguished guest as yourself.” He didn’t know what moved him to extend the invitation, but he regretted it the moment the words left his mouth.

Pierce gave him a steady look. “I agreed to help you find Metzger, Mr. Reyes, not to help you improve your standing with your family.”

“Of course,” Aaron said, swallowing the injury to his pride. Which was not say he was going to let Pierce go without a barb of his own: “Do say hello to Miriam for me.”

#

That Hosanna Reyes had outlived her husband was, Aaron believed, nothing if not a testament to the powers of spite. Certainly, their marriage had been peaceable enough—to a point—but he had never met a pair of people who detested each other more than his mother and father.

Had his siblings not reported with uniformity that their father had, indeed, perished of a perfectly natural heart attack, Aaron would not have had to work hard to believe that their mother might have killed him.

“And what have you done today?” she asked, when Aaron stepped into the sitting room where she did her knitting. She had a detached way of speaking that Aaron envied, betraying very little of what she thought or felt. His father had been nearly the opposite, blustering and transparent, all the more enraged by Hosanna’s silences.

Even now, with her aged and his childhood long gone, Aaron felt like he was hardly more than knee-high to her. “General Pierce has joined us. I convinced him that we needed him.”

His mother’s eyes flicked up from the needles. “Hasn’t he gotten tired of chasing heretics?”

“I think he no longer knows how to do anything else.” Aaron sat across from her, knowing better than to smoke in her parlor. His father had used to keep liquor, but since he had died, that seemed to have disappeared. “I thought it would take more work, to bring him in.”

“Haven’t you gotten tired of chasing Metzger?” His mother’s eyes were on him again.

Aaron had to look away. “Finding him will solidify my place here,” he said. “Betraying him earned my forgiveness, but it’s not enough.”

Her knitting needles clicked together softly. “My dear,” she said, “with you, nothing is ever enough.”

Aaron wished he knew what had happened to his father’s liquor.

His mother drew in a breath. “Close the door, Aaron. Your brothers don’t need to hear us.”

That was what she had used to say when she was going to scold him. He had the sense that she had done it simply to contrast his father, who disciplined each of his children where the others could see. Aaron rose and closed the sitting room door, and lingered there with his back to her.

“I never understood what you saw in that man,” she said. “There were plenty of others who would have lavished you with the attention you so clearly desired. Handsomer, of your own class. I’ll confess, it disturbed me greatly, to see you clinging to his shadow as you did.”

“I never clung,” Aaron muttered.

His mother was quiet a moment, and Aaron worried he had angered her. When he turned, she said, “When you were a boy, Bartholomew used to say that of all our children, you were the most like me.”

Aaron could believe that. His father had certainly made his disdain for his third son readily apparent.

“I do not think he was right.” She bent her head to look at her knitting. “I think you have tried very hard to be like me, and perhaps I encouraged it, but you have your father’s heart, and if I know my son, you already know it, and you detest it.”

Aaron drew in a very slow breath, trying to control his face. “Father is dead.”

“Yes. That does not remove his blood from your veins.” His mother looked at him. “Nor does the presence of his overshadow mine. They can work in concert, you know. You do not have to hold those parts of yourself in the same contention I had with Bartholomew.”

Aaron closed his eyes. “Mother, I don’t understand.”

“When you find Metzger, what do you intend to do with him?”

“He’ll be arrested, and brought to the Settlement for trial.” God willing, Pierce might even be able to talk him into repenting.

His mother laid her knitting her lap, and gazed steadily at him. “Is that all?”

“Likely, he will be executed. After sufficient public spectacle, of course.” James loathed the very idea of public repentance. He had heard a thousand tirades about how the church used the spectacle of repentance and rebaptism to enforce order, misusing sacrament to control the populace.

His mother’s face was impossible to read. “And you intend to allow this to happen?”

“He started a war, Mother.”

“One that you began with him, and fought with him.” This was the sort of prodding she had used to do with his father. Other wives might learn to fall silent, but never Hosanna. She was merciless.

“And ended without him,” Aaron answered. “He would have drug it on until every last man and woman in our cause was dead. _I_ finished the war, Mother, and now I have to make sure it stays finished.” He was too vehement, giving too much away. He swallowed down his anger, dragging a hand over his mouth while he gathered his thoughts and extinguished the fire. He had gotten out of practice, during the war, in knock-down, drag-out fights with James. Subtlety hadn’t been required or useful, then. “He doesn’t have the charm he had when I was twenty.”

“Do you want revenge?”

It would have been easy to say yes.

“It’s more complicated than that.”

Almost imperceptibly, his mother nodded. “Aaron,” she said, as he started to leave. “Of all my children, you were always dearest to me.”

Aaron stood a moment with his hand on the door, facing the dark hall. At length, all he said was, “Goodnight, Mother,” and left the door open behind him.

#

Ada did not generally spend much time in her sitting room. It was a room meant for entertaining, and when she did not have guests, the room felt unnecessary—but she couldn’t see well enough to read, and so she couldn’t get any office work done, and she found herself in the sitting room, because if she sat outside someone might approach her, want to speak with her.

She had her shoes up on the coffee table, which would have earned her a sharp scolding from Ester, but Ester was out with Finnbar and the Randalls, everyone a little shaken that Henry had been that close to the pede.

Ester was already furious with her, for having run back. “Keeping this place doesn’t do me any good if you’re dead, Ada!”

From where she was sat, Ada could see exactly one thing that held her attention fast.

There were clouds on the northwestern horizon. Fat, dark-bellied clouds from over the sea, clouds with the promise of a holy nightmare of a storm, clouds with the promise of rain.

She heard the beeping of a phone from somewhere in the house, and shortly after, Mrs. Hammond appeared with it in her hand. “Miss Carl,” she said, “it’s your mother.”

#

When the rain finally came, there was not a door in Carlston that wasn’t bursting with music. For days the pumps hummed, filling water tanks to the brim. The wind and the rain beat ceaselessly down, and though days before it had been dry and cracked, the river soon overflowed its bounds, flooding the town. Trucks and cars were driven onto raised platforms further from the river, and to get through the town, one had to use a raft, or a rowboat.

“Summer’s gone,” Micah murmured, watching the murky floodwater from his window. “How long do you suppose the town will be underwater?”

“Eight or nine weeks, from what Corbley’s told me. Maybe longer.” James’ shirt was still drying over Micah’s small heater. The temperature had plunged since the rains started, though it wasn’t truly cold. Only a pervasive dampness that Micah loathed.

Four days into the flood, the body of a drowned juvenile pede snagged on debris. It was pulled in, and whatever parts of it were salvageable were processed, the rest being dragged out to a fallow field to rot, and feed the fish.

James didn’t think much about the fact that he hadn’t seen Carl at all since the rain began, until he received a note from her that sounded oddly formal. _Please visit at your earliest convenience. I have something I need to discuss with you._

It didn’t even begin with her usual curt ‘Finnbar,’ and it ended without her informal A. Carl. The change puzzled him, and as he made his way to her house on a borrowed raft, he wondered if something had happened in the town that he had missed, another Joseph Cole that she needed taken care of.

Mrs. Hammond opened the door when he rang. “Hello, Mr. Finnbar. Miss Carl is in her office.”

He passed Webb standing in the parlor. The door was open, but she kept her back to him and gave no acknowledgment that she heard him, so James let her be, taking himself to Carl’s office door, which was closed.

The place looked like she had torn it apart and had only just started to repair the damage. A chair was overturned by the bookcase, papers were haphazardly collected on the desk. Carl was pacing, footsteps marking odd time against the drum of rain against the exterior of the house. James had the sense of having found her at a volatile moment, and he hadn’t the faintest notion why. “Ma’am?”

Carl stopped with her back to him, arms hugged across her ribs. “My mother called me a little over a week ago,” she said. “I hadn’t heard from her in months, I thought maybe she’d given up on me.” An uncomfortable silence hung in the air for a moment before Carl spoke again. “She apologized for not speaking in so long. Said that… things had been very busy. My father had been away from home, so she was handling all the business matters in his absence.”

James kept quiet. There was a pair of empty wine bottles on at the corner of the desk, but Carl didn’t seem to have been drinking recently.

“All my childhood my father only left Safe Harbor on two occasions,” Carl went on. “Once, when my grandfather died while he was in a hospital in the Settlement, and my father needed to retrieve his body. The second time, when he went to testify at a hearing, concerning some trade law I won’t bore you with the details of.”

He didn’t know what she was getting at, what could concern him about all of this, but her uneven tone, the vast amount of control she was wielding over her voice, made him uneasy.

“This time, I learn, my father was in the Settlement again. Getting a law passed.” Her voice tightened, and she seemed to take a moment to force a breath through her lungs. “A law,” she said, each word carefully weighed and measured, “that would prohibit any unmarried woman from owning land.”

The air felt heavier, choked with implication.

Carl turned, putting her hands on her desk and leaning over it, staring intently into the woodgrain. “Any land owned by an unwed woman, when the law goes into effect in less than a month,” she said, “will automatically default to her father, or another male relative.” Tension was drawn through her frame like a coiled spring.

James found his voice. “What do you intend to do?”

Carl finally looked at him. She seemed to have to steel herself to speak. “Understand,” she said, her voice quiet, “that what I am about to ask you, I am not asking as a landowner. I am not asking you because you work for me, or because you are simply the closest man. You have full right to refuse, I will—find a way around this one way or another. But I am asking you—” She drew in a breath. “I am asking you because I consider you a friend.”

James stared back at her. “And what, exactly, are you asking me?”

Carl laughed, a laugh that sounded like it hurt her. Like she might be holding back something a great deal closer to frustrated tears. She gave him a bitter smile.

“Do you want to get married, Mr. Finnbar?”


	13. A Capable Wife

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “A capable wife who can find?  
> She is far more precious than jewels.  
> The heart of her husband trusts in her,  
> and he will have no lack of gain.”  
> Proverbs 31:10-11

For months, it had been a joke. It was her needle for Pastor Richards, a shield between herself and the reality, and now Ada had said the words and made them real and they burned like acid at the back of her throat.

Finnbar had gone remarkably silent. He finally moved from the door, not quite so primed to flee, but he wasn’t looking at her, either. He was looking at photographs she had on the wall, from the early days of the town, before it was a town. She still couldn’t see clearly, but she knew what each was by the frame. One was just of her and Ester, a shovel over Ada’s shoulder, the pair of them standing on the plot that became their house. It was the portrait next to it that Finnbar settled on.

One of her and Rebecca, sixteen and fourteen years old, in their Sunday dresses. 

“Am I the first person you asked?” He addressed the photograph, more than her.

“Yes.”  Was that so difficult to believe? She thought her reasoning would be apparent. They understood each other, a marriage between them would exist on paper alone, and that would be enough.

“You asked, knowing I have a price on my head.”

“The person you were has a price on his head. James Finnbar is only a man who lives in Carlston. James Finnbar is no one.” Ada watched him, her hands still on her desk because if she lifted them, they would shake.

“And Miss Webb?”

Ada swallowed the sharp pain that arose at her name. “It was her idea.” She had known, on some level, that it would come to that. There was no time to fight it, no time to find any other loophole that might permit them to hold on to what they had—but it was Ester who had said it aloud, and given Ada the room to realize it. “She’s better at talking about it than I am. She detaches, see, makes it all sound political. _Our interests are aligned,_ she says. _It’s what’s best for all of us.”_

Ada cleared her throat, looked away. “And if I have to be honest with you, it brightens my day a little to think of my father finding out I married a man of no consequence, fortune, or reputation, all so I could spite him again.”

Finnbar was quiet, and Ada couldn’t tell from his posture what he was thinking.

After a moment, she saw his head bow. “We’ve never addressed it, but I think you know who I was, before I came here.”

“I’ve had my suspicions,” Ada answered.

“Has Micah told you? I know he pulls you aside, sometimes. To speak to you privately.”

Ada paused. “Micah knows?” He had never given the slightest indication. Every time he had pulled Ada aside since Finnbar had taken up with him, it had been to embarrassedly ask if things were really as good as Finnbar made them out to be, that he wasn’t concealing some trouble from Micah. It endeared and worried her, a little, but she had never thought he knew anything she didn’t. At least, not anything that she would care to know.

Finnbar was looking at the pictures again. “I told him. Weeks ago.”

“Finnbar—”

“Before I agree,” he said, “before I tie your name to mine just so you can hold onto this place—I need to know that you know who I am.” He turned, the burden of it all evident in the way he carried himself. He didn’t want to acknowledge it, he wanted to go on living the illusion he had constructed for himself. “I need to know that you know what you’re asking.”

Ada let out a breath. “I know that I am asking you to participate in a sham. I know that I am asking you to build another lie around yourself because I cannot bear to lose this place and be sent back to my father’s house. I know that I am asking you because never once since you arrived here have I believed that you were a danger to me.” She looked at him. “And if I am right, I know that your name is—was—John Metzger, and that right now harboring you is the least of my worries.”

“How in God’s name is that the least?” His voice was soft.

“Well, harboring you won’t be a concern if I lose Carlston, now, will it?” Ada looked at him. “The next question you’re going to ask is what I plan to do if you’re discovered.”

“That is a pressing concern of mine, yes.”

“Ask yourself, what’s the one thing that could prevent the church from taking you from this place?”

“Death, I imagine,” he answered flatly.

Ada gave him a scathing look. “The church’s own holy law. I’ve changed my mind, actually, being married to you might be legitimately unbearable.”

Finnbar looked at her, and she could almost see the pieces falling into place behind his eyes. “I don’t think even Richards wants your approval so badly that he’ll grant me sanctuary.”

“It isn’t about my approval, and you should know better. It’s about what I know and what I can give him in return.”

“Why?” Finnbar asked. “There must be other men who would—leave you alone, other men you trust—”

Ada laughed. “You have vastly underestimated how little I trust anyone outside of this house. Frankly, I’m offended you think I haven’t weighed every pro and con of asking you, specifically.” Ada couldn’t stand still any longer, she started to pace again.

“You want to know why? It’s not just that I trust you, or that the town respects you, though both of these things are true.” She turned by the window, arms folded. “When it comes down to it, Finnbar, you’re one of about three men in this entire godforsaken colony that I genuinely like.”

Almost as if in spite of himself, Ada saw him smile. “Who are the other two?”

“Corbley and Micah, both of whom I cannot marry for obvious reasons.” She bit her lip. “You haven’t given me an answer.”

Finnbar let out a breath. “It seems wrong, to shake hands over it.”

“Is that a yes?” She had hardly dared to hope. To hope was to invite disappointment.

He nodded. “What would you have done, if I refused?”

“I don’t know,” Ada admitted. “I had started to give serious thought to letting Pastor Richards find out just exactly what it would be like to be my husband.”

Finnbar laughed. “It seems I’m doing him a kindness, then.”

“He won’t think so.” Ada smiled wearily. “He will be… difficult, when I go to request a marriage license.” What a terrible thing to think about, requesting a license.

“I should go with you, shouldn’t I?” Finnbar let out a breath. “Though I don’t imagine it will make it any easier.”

“Yes, you should,” Ada agreed, “he’ll be significantly less likely to say anything to your face.” She was so tired. She felt the need to both weep and laugh at the absurdity of it all, that her father had forced her hand like this. “I won’t be telling my parents until after,” she said. “The less warning they have, the better.”

“Seems only fair.” Finnbar dragged a hand down his face. “Jesus,” he muttered.

“There are other things we’ll need to discuss,” Ada said, rubbing at her eyes. “But they can wait.”

“Ma’am—” he paused. “Should I still call you that?”

Ada laughed, shook her head. “You may as well start practicing my first name now.”

“Ada,” he said, almost hesitantly, “how are you?”

Ada leaned against her desk. “I’ve been better,” she said. It was all she could say, really. She was tired of battling her father at every turn. Tired of wishing that Nathan Carl would just die already and leave her in peace. “You?”

“A bit disoriented, I’ll admit.” Ada wished she could more clearly see his face, but from his voice, his posture, he seemed to be taking it well. Better than she was.

Ada smiled. “You should stay for a cup of coffee, at least dry out a little before you leave. The rain is a mercy, but it’ll do me no good if you take pneumonia.” She had to do something, busy herself, or she would drive herself mad.

“I used to wonder,” Finnbar said, “how it was you could throw yourself so wholly into this town, to leave so little thought for yourself—but that’s the idea, isn’t it? The less you’re given space to think about your devils, the better.”

“Inviting you into my home will give you far too much opportunity to observe me, Mr.—James,” she corrected herself. “I suppose it’s lucky for me we find ourselves in the position of depending on each other.”

“Perhaps one day you might even learn to trust me.”

“When I killed Joseph Cole, as I recall, you admitted to not trusting me.” Ada smiled. “But I think perhaps we’re both terrible liars. Suited for each other in that way, I suppose.” She looked away. “Perhaps the only way.”

“What is that you grieve more?” Finnbar asked. “That you have to create a sham marriage in the first place, or that you will no longer be perceived to be independent?”

Ada closed her eyes. “I can hear my father asking me the same question, only when he says it, it’s smug. Silly girl, reaching beyond her place. Playing at being a man.” She went to the window, leaned against the frame. “When people speak to me they will call me Mrs. Finnbar. When I make plans for this town, they will ask what my husband thinks. When I do not change the way that I dress and when everything remains under my name, they will talk about how much they pity you for this bitch of a woman you’ve married. Your indiscretions are only natural, mine are a deadly sin.”

The silence ached in her bones. “I’d like you to do something for me, when the dry season begins again,” she said.

“What are you asking as, this time? Employer, friend, or future wife?”

“Any will do. You remember Jacobsen, I trust?”

“Your father’s spy.”

“The very same.” Ada watched the shifting grey of the rain. “When the dry begins, and our food stores have begun to run low… take Mr. Jacobsen pede hunting.”

She looked over her shoulder. “See that he doesn’t return.” 

#

It was only a brief time before Aaron came to all of James’ fights. And a briefer time after that, until he told James that he ought to come live with Aaron. “Your mother’s cousin—”

“I caught Nahum doing something he’d rather I not tell anyone else about,” Aaron replied, with his wicked smile. “He’ll not say a word. I’m only helping out a dear friend, after all.”

It had an air of unreality, joining Aaron in that house. Perhaps because he woke every day expecting it to end, because except for Aaron, he was so clearly unwanted. A stray that Aaron had taken a fancy to. James gathered he wasn’t the first.

After about six months, he gathered he had lasted the longest.

“Where does your mind go?” Aaron asked, laying across James’ chest one night. He had the air of indolent curiosity, a satisfied smirk on his face. “In the quiet. You’re not in this room with me, when your mind goes wandering.”

He trailed his fingers through Aaron’s hair. “I think about the fights, sometimes.”

“And the rest of the time?”

He thought about a great many things. Hell, chiefly among them, and how he was bound for it. He had started to write to Hannah, now that he had a place for letters to be received. He hadn’t the slightest notion where Ruth was. Her husband—the second, after the first had died in an accident—traveled often, and she went with him. Hannah said Ruth married traveling men because she was always running.

He thought of writing to Leah, sometimes, but the memory of the last time he saw her and Mrs. Finnbar would smother him with shame and grief and he couldn’t bring himself to say the things he wanted to say.

Hannah’s letters never spoke of their father. She talked about her husband and her sons, about people she knew he would remember. She spoke of the changing seasons.

Once, and only once, she talked about their mother.

_Do you remember her, Jamie? Even at all? You were so little. I was ten and I still can’t remember as much as I’d like to. She used to pray with us all. You were just learning. This will embarrass you, probably, but you were such a soft-hearted boy—you had terrible nightmares and I remember there were nights when Momma slept in our room, just to soothe you back to sleep._

Nightmares. He had those again, now. About the brand. About the beatings he’d gotten before they had resorted to the brand. Demanding he repent. In the dreams that reenacted it, he had a great deal to say about the matter, but at the time, he had only been silent.

The Bishop’s Men had had a lot to tell him about the nature of Hell.

“You’re wandering again,” Aaron said, put out.

“The rest of the time I think about what I’m going to do when you get bored with me,” James said.

It was an unfair thing to say, he supposed, but Aaron only scoffed. “You’ve been listening to the staff.”

“They’re the only people in this house that will talk to me, besides you.”

“Ignore them, at least where I’m concerned.” Aaron smiled. He put his arms on either side of James and moved up, straddling James’ waist. “If you want to know me, you’ll have to do the work yourself.”

Aaron seemed to like showing James off. He bought clothes that James would never have dreamed of spending that much money on, so that he could bring James to parties of the elite, parties he never would have been invited to and parties he wouldn’t have gone to, except that Aaron would flash that wicked grin and make it out as if they were conspiring together, and James couldn’t say no.

It was before one such party that he first met Hosanna Reyes. She had come without her husband, a petite woman with the same curled black hair as her son, and the coldest dark eyes James had ever seen. It was the first time he saw Aaron truly nervous.

“Mother,” he said, “this is my friend, John James Metzger.”

“I’ve heard his name,” Hosanna replied, not an ounce of warmth in her voice, though she was perfectly courteous. “Nahum mentioned him.”

“It’s a pleasure,” James said, because he had learned that was the thing wealthy people said to each other when they met, even though Hosanna unsettled him and he breathed a little easier when Aaron took him away. “She looked like she’d be happy to slit my throat for even looking at you.”

Aaron didn’t contradict him.

It was the same day he would meet Lieutenant Pierce.

He noticed first the uniform of an officer in the Bishop’s Army, the deep blue coat and the polished buttons, the patch that indicated his rank. Aaron noticed the way he tensed, and followed his gaze across the ballroom. “You know him?”

“No. Just can’t say I care much for soldiers.”

Aaron started to say something, but James didn’t hear him, because he saw a flash of red hair, and saw Miriam Hall put her hand on the officer’s arm, and give him a familiar, intimate smile.

“Seems like you know _her,”_ Aaron said sharply.

“I—” James couldn’t summon anything to say, he was too stunned, and he watched as Miriam started to look around the room, and saw her eyes settle on him, the flash of recognition. The officer—her fiance, no, her husband, by now—noticed her surprise, looked James’ way, and he couldn’t hear what they said to each other, but in the next moment it they were on their way across the room.

The officer smiled genially, and Miriam wore a smooth, empty smile. “James,” she said, “I’m so surprised to see you here. Darling, this is, ah—”

“John James Metzger,” James said, extending his hand to the officer because it was easier than looking at Miriam, or allowing her to introduce him by the wrong name.

“Samuel Pierce,” the officer said, shaking his hand.

“We knew each other in the Settlement,” Miriam said, “remember I told you about Mrs. Finnbar’s ward? This is her brother.”

“Pleasure to meet any friend of my wife’s,” Pierce said, “and your friend?”

Aaron put on a honeyed smile, extending his hand. “Aaron Reyes.”

There was some awkward chatting, during which Miriam kept catching his eye, always seeming on the verge of divulging a secret, except to think better of it, holding tight to her husband’s arm like a lifeline.

Pierce asked him what he did, and before James had a chance to answer, Aaron was telling Pierce about the fights. “Should have seen the rings he was fighting in when I found him,” Aaron said, “now he’s in all the top ones, and demolishing the competition, I might add.”

Pierce made the suggestion that he ought to enlist. “Better to make a career in the army.”

Miriam smiled thinly, her hand tightening on Pierce’s arm. “Darling, not every man is suited to be a soldier.”

“I’d be poorly matched with the army,” James agreed, a ghost of pain burning on his shoulder.

“Nonsense, why do you think that?” Pierce seemed genuinely surprised, as if he could not fathom the idea. “I enlisted when I was fifteen, now look at me.”

James’ felt a sudden sting of loathing for the man in front of him. “Likely because the last time I was in the company of Bishop’s Men they were putting a brand to me.”

Miriam went a little pale around the edges, and the amicable smile vanished from Pierce’s face.

“Well,” Aaron said, taking James’ arm, “it’s been lovely, but I quite think it’s time to go—”

“Why?” Pierce asked. “What did you do?”

“Ask the street preacher who laid hands on my sister and called her a whore,” James replied. “Because I only gave him what he deserved.”

Pierce considered that a moment, and nodded. “It is unfortunate, then, that he happened to be a preacher. Otherwise you wouldn’t be in this position.”

James wanted to say more, but he pushed the thought away. “It was nice to meet you, Lieutenant Pierce.” He nodded to Miriam. “Mrs. Pierce.”

“James,” she said, as he started to turn away. “We’ll be in Paradise for a little while,” she said. “I would like to see you again, if it’s not too much trouble. To catch up.”

“I would like that,” James said, having no intention of being alone with Miriam Pierce or her husband ever again.

#

_Dear Mr. Metzger,_

_If I have done something to offend you, and thus earn your determined avoidance, I would like to know the nature of my offense, so that I might make amends, rather than be left wondering why at my every attempt to contact you, you seem to vanish into thin air. I had been under the impression that we were once friends, but if I am mistaken in that assumption, then I would appreciate a correction so that in the future I need not embarrass myself by introducing you as such to those dear to me. Assuming, of course, you ever permit me to speak to you again._

_If you worry that my intentions are not virtuous, then you need not, as I am quite content with my husband and only wish to see again someone I had considered my friend._

_With my sincerest frustration,_

_Miriam Pierce  
_

_#_

There was a break in the rain, when they set out for Richards’ house. Carl was handling her discomfort and upset by talking of the town’s concerns, of anything that didn’t pertain personally to either of them. “How is Henry?” she asked. “Have you seen him?”

“I don’t imagine he’ll stray far from his parents’ for quite some time,” James said, “but he’s fine, otherwise.”

Soon enough run out of things to talk about, and grew fidgety.

“You fuss like that in front of Richards and he’s going to be even more convinced I’ve somehow manipulated you into this,” James told her.

Carl gave a short laugh. “I suppose you’re right. If I don’t calm down, he’ll construct some story where you’re the Devil himself.” She shoved her hands into the pocket of her coat. “I was just thinking that at some point, you’ll have to meet my parents.” She grimaced. “And I’ll have to be there, too.”

“Do they visit you often?”

“No. God forbid.” Carl shook her head. “Mother came to Carlston a couple of times, usually when I couldn’t conceal that I was sick or hurt. Father never has, he’s only interested in bringing me home and reaping the profits of the mine.” She tapped her foot restlessly against the floor of the boat. “Mother will despair that she wasn’t here for my wedding. That might be enough to bring her out. I don’t know about Father. Don’t suppose there’s anyone I’ll be meeting on your behalf?”

“No.”

Carl got up to grab hold of Richards’ porch when they reached his home, tying the boat to the rail. The water was still a foot or so below the bottom of his house, but the way the rain was falling, it seemed like that might soon change. Carl pulled herself up onto the steps and held the rail, reaching down to clasp James’ hand and pull him up after her. “Lucky for us the good pastor can’t abide the damp, or he’d have seen us coming.”

They knocked on his door, and when Pastor Richards opened the door, he evidently had a cold. “Oh! Miss Carl, Mr. Finnbar, please come in, what can I do for you?” He held a kerchief over his face, from behind which he could be heard sniffling.

The pastor’s house was as modest inside as it was out, sparsely furnished, and his sitting room filled largely with theological texts and books of church law. Carl’s voice changed, softer and sweeter, entreating. “We’ve come for a marriage license, Pastor.”

Behind his kerchief, James watched Richard’s face go ash-grey. He went into a coughing fit, turning away. Carl gave an exasperated look to the back of his head that was gone as soon as Richards turned round again. “Apologies, I’ve never handled the cold well—a—a marriage license, you said?” He sounded like he very much hoped he had misheard.

“Yes.” Carl cast a sugary sweet smile in James’ direction, and it took everything he had not to give her a skeptical look in return. He put an arm around her shoulders, somehow managing to smile, and Richards turned away again.

“Right, well, ah—are you quite sure? Sorry, I only mean that it seems quite out of the blue.”

“Oh, not at all,” Carl said, “James and I have been discussing it for some time.” She put her arm around his waist, and Richards looked like he might be ill. More seriously ill.

“Right, ah, please give me a moment, to find what I need. Can I—get you anything else?”

“Oh, we wouldn’t want to impose,” Carl replied swiftly. “We’ll just handle the license and set a date, and be on our way.”

It was an uncomfortable little ritual, but under the pressure of Richards’ gaze, Carl was perfectly sunny, a demeanor that faded as the door closed behind her and she permitted her shoulders to sag and an exasperated sigh to escape her.

“He thinks you’re pregnant,” James said drily, as they pushed the boat away.

Carl looked at him with the purest expression of offended horror he had ever seen from anyone. _“Excuse_ me?”

“He kept looking at your middle,” James said. “And then looking at me like he wished Hell to swallow me up at that moment.”

“God in Heaven,” Carl said, putting a hand to her face.

“It’s only natural he’d assume the worst,” James said, unable to keep the amusement from his voice. “A vulnerable woman such as yourself, without a strong man to guide her—”

“I will throw you out of this boat, James Finnbar, I swear to God.”

#

_Dear Mrs. Pierce,_

_It was never my intention to offend, and you have my sincerest apologies that I have. I only wished to avoid causing conflict for you, as I cannot pretend that certain elements of our history did not happen, and if I have gathered the correct impression from our last encounter, it is a history of which some dear to you are entirely unaware._

_I am glad to hear that you are well and happy, and I wish you all the best, but I don’t think I can meet with you, or I will say something we may both regret, and so I have avoided you._

_You were a dear friend to me, when I lived in Mrs. Finnbar’s household, and I still value that friendship and the kindness you showed to me and my sister. Were it not for you, I think we might both have struck out on our own again. Whatever you may think of me now, I hope you know that._

_You have my congratulations on your marriage.  
_

_J. Metzger_

#

“I was very sorry to hear of your mother’s death,” Aaron told John Sato, the oldest of Hannah’s sons. “Might I ask how she died?”

“Doctors said it was a stroke,” John answered, his posture guarded. He remembered Aaron, if only a little, but his eyes seldom left Stark, who was idly looking around the shop. “Why are you here, again?”

Aaron was beginning to learn that there was no delicate way to go about this. “I had wondered if you heard from your uncle, recently.”

John’s scowl was the first real expression he had given Aaron since he walked into the store. “No. And he wouldn’t be welcome here. I don’t give no shelter to heretics.”

“Nor should you,” Aaron said, soothingly, “but if he has made any attempt to contact your family, it would help us—”

“He hasn’t,” John said sharply, “and I can give you the logs to prove it.”

Aaron could imagine how much it would have injured James, to hear his sister’s children speak of him like that. They had only been boys, when James last saw them, curious about the uncle they didn’t know who seemed so eager to dote on them. He recalled Josephine Finnbar standing in her grandmother’s house, asking Aaron to pass along her message, just to be sure her uncle would know the sting of her hate before he died.

“Another dead end,” Stark growled after, in the church that had given them room to stay and work for a few days. Aaron remembered James telling him about the nights he had used to sleep in that church, to escape his father. “What will we go chasing next, Reyes? Perhaps an angel will come to you and tell you where Metzger is hiding.”

“That’s enough, Lieutenant,” Pierce said, not looking up from Stark’s drafted report. Stark’s underlings were still combing through the Satos communication logs, but Aaron doubted they would find anything useful.

“Sir,” Stark protested, “we had information that Metzger fled to Kelchak territory—”

“You had _rumors_ and _speculation_ ,” Aaron replied, “neither of which will do you a damn bit of good.”

“I’m given to agree with Mr. Reyes,” Pierce said. “Metzger may be in hiding, but he has been in hiding before, and he has never attempted to flee to the Kelchak in all that time. He did trade with them, but I see no evidence that he believed they would help him beyond that, or that they would, in fact, offer any sort of help.”

“They wouldn’t,” Aaron said, “the lizards wanted goods from us, little oddities of human items they could take home as souvenirs. They were familiar with Metzger, particulary, only insofar as he reliably obtained those things for them, and managed to learn to speak a little of their language. They didn’t give a shit about the war.”

“And what have you got to offer us that’s better?” Stark demanded. “Sentimentality? An old woman and a dead sister? He may not have gone to his family at all. You said yourself, the last time he saw any of them was before the war.”

“Yes,” Aaron said, “and if you were in his place, Stark, where would you first look for help? From the men you failed, or your own kin?”

“Even if he hasn’t gone to his family,” Pierce said, voice rising, “Mr. Reyes is correct in that it is worth investigating. If we do not find him there, we can begin exploring other avenues, old heretic haunts and the like. Until then, you are dismissed, Lieutenant.”

Stark stormed out, and Aaron was relieved to see him go. “I suppose I should thank you,” he said to Pierce.

Pierce pushed the preliminary report away. “The longer we go without results, the more antagonistic he will become.”

As if Aaron didn’t know that. “You know as well as I do that to hunt James quickly is to not find him at all. Stark would have us blundering forward blindly, letting him know all our movements and how best to avoid them.”

“Reyes—”

“His eldest sister still lives. If we do not find a lead with her then I will let Stark have one of his stupid ideas, but I cannot overlook this.”

“I know that, Reyes.” Pierce looked weary. “But the season has turned, and I think it would be best if we returned to the Settlement for now, and planned for the coming summer, instead of wasting our time on travel delays.”

“I’ll let you suggest that to Stark,” Aaron said, “because if it’s me, he’ll think I’m delaying on James’ behalf, and nothing could be further from the truth.”

Pierce looked at him oddly. “You truly want to be rid of him, don’t you?”

Aaron gripped the back of a chair, recalling his conversation with his mother. “My redemption depends on his capture.” Rebaptism wasn’t enough, not if he wanted to be anything close to what he could have been before he met James.

Pierce was still giving him that odd look. “You were his most loyal man, once. What happened that you’d risk his execution, now?”

Loyal. That was one word for what Aaron had been, he supposed. He doubted James would have used the word. “Maybe someday I’ll tell you, General,” he said, “for now, all you need to know is that I became disenchanted with war.” 

#

_James,_

_You should contact your sister. You are sorely missed. I imagine there is quite a bit she would like to tell you._

_I shall not bother you any further._

_Though we only knew each other a short time, please know that I always thought you would make a good man. You shall make some woman very happy, someday._

_Best wishes,_

_Miriam_

#

When Reyes departed from their temporary residence in Janesville just before dawn, Samuel followed him. Military life had made an early riser of him, and it was hard to miss the deep wine red of Reyes’ coat as he struck out, with the purposeful stride of someone who knew where he was going.

Reyes was something of an irritating mystery to Samuel, a man who managed to be smug even in his lowest moments. During the war, in battle, or in negotiation—wherever Metzger had been, so too had been Reyes. The nature of their relationship had been the subject of a great deal of salacious rumor, and if Samuel had given it any credit, it had been because of the apparent devotion between them. They had seemed, in those brief moments when he had encountered them in war, closer than any husband and wife.

How then, to reconcile that with Reyes betraying Metzger, and everything that had happened since? Something had changed. Samuel didn’t know what.

And he didn’t trust ignorance.

He followed Reyes to a cemetery, where Reyes picked his way between the rows, apparently looking for one in particular. When he found what he was looking for, he said, “You don’t need to hide in the bushes, General, I know you’re there.”

Samuel looked at the names on the stones as he stepped forward. Rebecca and John Christopher Metzger, and just below Rebecca’s, a smaller stone, with the name ‘Abel Metzger,’ and a single date.

“Do you know the most absurd thing that James ever told me?” Reyes said, pulling out a cigarette. When Samuel didn’t say anything, he went on, “He believed his mother’s death was his fault. He was already four, when she died birthing what would have been his younger brother, but somehow he found a way to blame himself for it.” Reyes stared at the stones. “And it wasn’t even so much that he missed her, because he hardly remembered her—it was knowing what his father became afterward. Knowing, or at least believing, what a burden he was on his sisters. So it’s his fault, isn’t it? That all this suffering happened.”

“It seems to have affected you,” Samuel said.

Reyes snorted. “Spending half your life with someone will do that to you. Their issues start to become yours.” He looked skyward. “He wouldn’t let me come here, when I came to Janesville with him, after his father died. Too ashamed, I suppose, to let his dead mother know her last child grew up queer.”

To hear the word spoken aloud and with such a casual admission jarred something in Samuel, like it had broken down a door he meant to keep locked. Reyes was looking at him, measuring his reaction. “You knew, didn’t you? You must have known.”

Samuel looked away. “Not at first.”

“I hope you don’t think I’m as ignorant as you are then, General.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Of course not,” Reyes purred. “You’re a righteous man, after all,with a wife and children. Who could ever imply such things about you?” His eyes were laughing. Reyes closed the distance between himself and Samuel, so that they were close enough for Samuel to feel Reyes’ breath on his cheek. “A word of advice, General—if you don’t want to raise suspicion, it’s best not to go following people like me off into undisclosed locations in the small hours of the morning.”

Reyes stepped away just as quickly, turning on his heel.

“Reyes.”

He stopped a few paces away, looking over his shoulder with an arched brow and a cigarette on his lips, framed by the early morning light through the leaves of a flowering tree. He looked—

Reyes smiled. “Yes, General?”

It would have been easy, to crush him up against that tree, to learn just what it was that had persuaded Metzger to keep Reyes with him all those years. Frighteningly easy.

“Best not wander off to undisclosed locations in the small hours of the morning,” Samuel said, “unless someone believe you’re still conspiring with heretics.”

There seemed to be the faintest flash if disappointment in Reyes’ face, but it was gone in a moment, behind that cruel smile. “Of course, General. You’ll forgive me just this once, though. For old time’s sake.”


	14. Even the Wind and the Sea

James had never seen Micah so quiet, so absorbed in his thoughts. He stood by his dresser, plucking disinterestedly at his things. Strings of beads, tins of soap and powder, glass bottles of perfume. The mirror over the dresser showed his face, thoughtful and distant. He glanced up at James in the mirror. “So—it’s just for show. To get around this law.”

“That’s all,” James said. “I have to live in her house for appearances, but she’s already begun clearing out a room on an entirely different floor. It won’t be very much different from the boarding house, really.”

“I suppose I don’t have any right to be jealous,” Micah said, looking down again. “It’s silly, but I am.” 

What James had expected to hear, he didn’t know, but not that. It took him a moment to be able to speak again. “I don’t think it’s silly.”

Micah turned around to look at him, started to say something, when there was the unmistakable sharp rap of Daisy knocking at the door. “Busy!” Micah called.

“Don’t take too long,” Daisy answered, “Miss Carl wants to speak to you.”

Micah frowned. “To me?”

“S’what I said, wasn’t it?”

Micah looked at James, puzzled, and said, “Should I just go down?”

James shrugged. “She’s not much for patience.” He rose, kissing Micah’s cheek. “I should probably go, anyway. Have a dozen more things on my plate to do while she plans the wedding. Can’t do anything without a show.”

Micah stood on his toes to kiss James, and pulled a shirt from where it hung near his heater. “What d’you think she wants with me?”

James laughed, pulling on his coat. “Last time I tried to guess what she wanted before I spoke to her I ended up getting engaged.”

Carl never went into the brothel directly. She had deemed that a push too far for what could be considered acceptable for a woman landowner, so though James didn’t see her on his way out, he knew she would be in what Daisy termed her ‘office,’ a small room off to the side of the main floor, with a door that opened onto the street. That was where Micah went, ducking past the pale door and disappearing inside.

A low fog had settled over the water when James stepped outside, and a flurry of dark fish fled from the underside of the boats when jostling disturbed the water. Some were as long as his arm, six fins spinning away into the murk.

He had spoken to Carl that morning, getting a laundry list of tasks that would likely be tedious and keep him busy for the rest of the day. Set to a goal again after so long spent languishing, she had been nearly manic, and fussing over the glasses she now had to wear to compensate for her damaged vision. “Now I really do look like a spinster,” she’d said, when he remarked on them.

James had gone up to take a look at where he would soon be living, a modest room that was still more generous than he needed, with windows that faced the river. With the floods, all he saw was a glassy expanse of dark water, and the forest in the distance.

The stairs brought him down past Webb’s sewing room, where she was pinning cream-colored fabric on a dressmaker’s mannequin.

Making Carl’s wedding dress.

He paused in the door, and Webb glanced up, apparently unsurprised to see him. She pulled three pins from the corner of her mouth, and glanced away. “She thought there would be too much gossip if she turned up at her own wedding in a suit.”

James took in the long sweep of fabric, the high bodice. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

Webb turned her head only enough for him to see the curve of her cheek, and she sat back on her heels to look at the dress. “Of course, it bothers me.” She stood, going around to the back of the dress. “When Ada bought this place, she told me Carlston was the only husband she’d ever need. I suppose I got too comfortable with the thought that we would never need something more to hold onto it.” She pinned something to the shoulder, glanced at James. “But when all choices were considered, I found you to be the least objectionable. So I suppose I will have to get used to the idea.”

He supposed that ‘least objectionable’ was the most he could ask for.

Since that first meeting in her office, Ada had left nothing unexamined. Every time he saw her, she had something new to iron out, to debate and settle. Including one topic which she prefaced with, “Don’t give me a hasty answer—in fact, don’t give me an answer at all, just yet. I haven’t quite made up my mind myself. It’s just—something we ought to consider.”

It had been by far the least comfortable conversation he had with her, not the least because she didn’t seem to keen on the idea herself, except that she was stubbornly determined to make sure it was discussed. “I know that all my reasons sound selfish but I don’t mean for it to be that way, only that it makes sense for the long term.”

Ada had brought that up a few times—the long term. The expedient marriage might be to solve a short term problem, but already she was thinking beyond that, how best to make use of it to preserve not only Carlston, but her hold on it. Miss Carl had run her life a little differently than the future Mrs. Finnbar would. Where exactly James fit into that, he didn’t quite know, yet.

The oddest thing was thinking of her with that name: Mrs. Finnbar. He could barely imagine a woman less like the Sarah Finnbar he had known.

He had tried to imagine them meeting, once or twice, but he couldn’t decide whether Ada would have a favorable first impression of her, or not, which would color their interaction, and so he left it a vague wondering. They were never going to encounter each other, so it seemed pointless to puzzle over.

Mrs. Barnes was out on her porch as he went by, and she gave a delighted smile when she saw him. “Mr. Finnbar, I’ve just heard the news! Congratulations!”

James managed to thank her without conveying his despair knowing that he would have to hear her congratulations for the next two weeks, or telling anyone who didn’t ask that ‘dear Mr. Finnbar is engaged to Miss Carl!’ as if it had been an arrangement of her own making.

If there was one mercy, at least she would no longer be trying to introduce him to every widow, spinster, or girl just barely old enough to marry.

He thought again about Micah as he turned a corner. _I suppose I don’t have any right to be jealous, but I am._ Something in his chest constricted at the memory, an ache he didn’t quite want to name.

“You’re a damn fool, James Finnbar,” he muttered under his breath, with nothing but the fog to hear. 

#

The thing Aaron loathed most about returning to the Settlement was the boredom. There were too many eyes on him, to many people who didn’t want to seem too cozy with him, to do anything he might once have done. No bars, no parties. He didn’t even bother going to the fights to gamble, because he couldn’t be sure that any money he lost would be replaced.

He was left instead to sulk around his father’s house—his brother Daniel’s house now, he supposed—unable to even make himself useful.

“You ought to consider finding yourself a wife,” his mother said one afternoon when he was skulking about the parlor, and presumably annoying her.

“And who in the Covenant would ever permit their daughter to marry me?” Aaron asked. “I fear my reputation has been irreparably tarnished, in that regard.”

“I think that you are making excuses for yourself,” Hosanna replied. “Had you married when I sent you to Nahum, as you were meant to, much of this might have been avoided.”

“I think you underestimate how much women liked James,” Aaron said. “Genuinely liked him, as a brother or friend. Who knows, perhaps if I’d married then, my wife would have been an even bigger heretic than myself.” A fair amount of women who found their way to the cause had even loved James, and sometimes that had ended well, and sometimes it hadn’t.

“You will not speak that way in this house,” his mother said sternly, “not to me.”

“Apologies, Mother.” He rubbed at his temple, not sure if the oncoming headache he felt was real or a result of his frustration. “In any case, I see no need to be as miserable in my own marriage as you and Father were in yours. Nor any need to visit that misery upon some poor woman who’s biggest crime was that her father couldn’t find her a better husband.”

Hosanna pursed her lips. “If you wish to become a statesman of any consequence, after Metzger is dealt with, you will need a wife.”

There was that, he supposed. It wasn’t impossible to become a statesman as a single man, but if one had ambition, then one needed to show he was capable of governing a family. “Then I will worry about it after James is dealt with.”

He heard the bell at the door, and a houseman going to answer it, but he paid it no mind. His brothers had plenty of visitors, it was never anything that concerned him.

A few minutes later the houseman appeared in the door of the sitting room. “Mrs. Reyes,” he said, handing a crisp cream-colored card to Hosanna, “an invitation from General Pierce.”

Aaron looked up sharply. His mother took the card and dismissed the houseman. She looked at Aaron, arched her brows slightly. “Did you know about this?”

Aaron shook his head. Hosanna lifted her reading glasses from the chain around her neck. “It is an invitation to a private dinner with General Pierce and his family. For myself, your siblings, their spouses, and you.”

Aaron knew his surprise was visible, and he wasn’t sure he cared enough to conceal it from her.

“Is there a particular reason General Pierce might be inviting us to dinner?” His mother asked.

Aaron smiled, sat back in his chair. “I don’t know, Mother, perhaps the good general simply enjoys my company.”

Hosanna gave him a disapproving look, and laid the invitation on the table. “How eager you are to leap back into a snare after you just freed yourself from the last one.”

“I’m not the one who’s ensnared, Mother.” It would have been difficult to misinterpret the way Pierce had looked at him in that Janesville cemetery.

“That’s your arrogance talking,” Hosanna said. “Such entanglements never leave just one party trapped.” She regarded him. “Was not John Metzger once entangled with Mrs. Pierce?”

Aaron steepled his fingers. “I never told you that.”

“You noticed because you were jealous. I noticed because I was giving a keen eye to the man who had taken up with my son.”

“That was twenty years ago.” It irked him, somehow, that her disdain for James ran that deep. Irked him even more that he knew exactly what event she was talking about.

“And my memory is sharp as ever,” Hosanna replied. “Men deride women for their gossip, but a great deal of useful information can be gleaned from it, if you know what to make of it.” She gave a very small smile, with which Hosanna, might as well have been outright laughter.

Aaron frowned. “What do you know about Miriam Pierce?”

“I am not certain you would make proper use of that information.” She reached for the teapot on the table, refilling her cup, and his, though he didn’t want any more tea. “What is Mrs. Pierce to you, hm? Besides the wife of your latest infatuation.”

_Infatuation._ As if he were a boy again, bringing home some stray from a bar to dress up for a few months and be rid of just as quickly.

She was doing it to test him. “If I say she is nothing to me, then perhaps that only tells you I’m ignorant of something. If I say she is something, it only confirms your beliefs about my tendency to jealousy, and irrational behavior.”  He pressed a finger to his temple. “So I’ll say that I don’t know what Mrs. Pierce is to me, just yet, but it seems like you might.”

She gave him that small smile over her tea cup. “Perhaps.” 

#

“I feel like a fool,” Ada murmured, turning to see her dress from a different angle. It would be nothing extravagant—both because there wasn’t the time and Ada wouldn’t have suffered it—but Ester was determined it would be beautiful, nonetheless. The kind of dress that Ada ought to have.

“As far as foolish things you’ve done, this doesn’t even make the top ten.” Ester smiled at her in the mirror. The collar was high, to cover the scars. It made Ada look a little matronly.

“You keep a ranked list?” Ada asked, holding up her arm to better see the cuff of her sleeve.

“Updated weekly,” Ester teased, making a note to adjust the hem of the skirt. “This? Somewhere in the thirties.”

“Glad to know it being top forty justifies my feelings.” Ada let her arms fall to her sides, squared her shoulders. “I haven’t worn a dress since…”

Since Rebecca’s funeral, was what she was about to say. Ester put her arms around Ada, her chest against Ada’s back. “I know.”

Ada laid her hand over Ester’s arm, letting out a breath. “It ought to be you,” she said. “If my mother had had her way, it would have been you.”

Ester smiled, turned a kiss into Ada’s neck. “You never wanted to be Mrs. Webb.”

“Could’ve made you Mrs. Carl,” Ada replied, “if this colony made even a bit of sense.” She laced her fingers through Ester’s. “Suppose I’m going to Hell for wishing my father dead?”

“I’ll be right beside you,” Ester replied. She let go of Ada and took a step back. “So? Anything you want changed?”

Ada spun, just once, watching her skirt flare just high enough to raise a few eyebrows. By his own admission, Finnbar was a terrible dancer, but Ada didn’t see why that had to stop her. It was her wedding, after all. “No. It’s perfect.”

#

If sharing a secret had made allies out of Ester and Ada, it hadn’t made them friends—at least, not at first. Ester still resented sharing her lessons with Ada (Rebecca was more tolerable), still detested the firm pressure from both their mothers that they ought to marry, still hated Ada’s vocal displeasure at everything that annoyed her.

But, at that bar in the late hours of the night, they could almost get along.

“I should have known about you,” Ada said, snatching someone’s half-finished drink out from under their nose, “the quiet ones are always hiding something.”

“And what does that make you?” Ester asked.

“Honest.” Ada grinned, her cheeks flushed apple-red. She was drunk, Ester supposed because Moira wasn’t there to keep an eye on her. “Now, tell me, Webb—and be honest with me—” Ada stumbled over her own two feet, and Ester had to catch her to keep her from falling onto a table. “—why do you wear such an ugly fucking dress?”

“Excuse me?” Ester quashed the impulse to shove Ada into that table anyway.

“It don’t fit you at all,” Ada said, making a vague gesture across her chest that indicated she meant the bodice.

“It wasn’t made to fit me, now, was it?” Ester asked. “I bought it from a secondhand place, said it was a gift for my fiancee.”

“Poor girl,” Ada giggled, “that you’d dress her up in that shade of purple.” She leaned up against a support beam, having given herself the hiccups. “Anyway, it’s gotta be taken in. Your whole damn top’s about to fall out.”

“If I could sew, I’d do it myself,” Ester grumbled.

“Ah, I fucking hate sewing lessons,” Ada said, “all I get for my trouble is an ache in my neck and a lot of crooked seams. Bout all I can do is darn socks and sew buttons.” She closed her eyes. “You can learn that shit from books, you know? There’s a bunch, I’ll bring you some. They’re a little old, but Mother’s not using them, that’s for sure.”

“I—okay?”

She didn’t expect Ada to actually keep her promise, or even remember it, but the next time they had lessons together she had a parcel wrapped in paper stuck between her books, and while Ledford was out, it found its way into Ester’s bag. It came with a tiny packet of sewing needles taped to the inside, and a note: _What kind of aspiring doctor can’t sew? Start with your socks, worry about finding a machine later. AC_

Ester felt strangely pleased with the gift, and when next they had lessons, she slipped her old neckties and cufflinks into Ada’s bag. She saw Ada wearing them at the bar, and began to find ribbons and bracelets in her bag.

There was a fortune teller at the bar, a woman with lips stained dark, teeth blued by ara leaf cigarettes, who read fortunes with a worn pack of playing cards. She called herself Magdalena, with a coy smile, asking, “You want your future told, honey?”

It was Ada who talked her into having Magdalena read her fortune, and Ester watched her shuffle the cards with a gambler’s hand. “Oh, someone’s lucky,” Magdalena laughed, when the King and Queen of hearts fell next to each other. “Seems there’s serious romance in your future, love.”

Ester rolled her eyes at the thought, but she was interested in how Magdalena did it, thought it might be something she could do at parties to avoid having to make small talk, and so in exchange for high quality cigarettes that Magdalena couldn’t regularly afford, she taught Ester how to read cards.

“You should do that at Rebecca’s birthday,” Ada said, watching the first few times Ester read for someone else. “Our parents are throwing a big party, I think Becca would have fun with it.”

“I don’t know,” Ester said.

“Do it!” Ada pushed, “Hell, I’ll be your first client.”

Rebecca’s birthday party was on a sunny Saturday afternoon when the wind blew in off the harbor and crusted the windowpanes with salt. Buttoned into her suit and looking every inch the proper gentleman, Ester went over a little early, hoping to discreetly ask Ada how she might be able to get a sewing machine to practice with.

A housewoman let her in, taking Ester to the parlor, where she would have waited, except that a man started to yell so loudly she feared for whoever was the object of his rage. Ester went to investigate—and found Mr. Carl with his back to her, screaming in Ada’s face, one of Ester’s old neckties clutched tight in his hand. “If I find out you’ve been running around screwing some boy, you little slut—”

Ada was already in her party dress, hair done and made-up, and she stared fiercely back at her father, face stony, and dreadfully, sickeningly _silent._ Ester had never once known Ada to be so still and quiet, and now she hated to see it, the lines of tension through Ada’s arms and shoulders, her hands forced to lay stiffly against her sides, her jaw clenched.

Ester started to move to leave, and it was only then that Ada saw her. Her face blossomed an ugly, shame-filled red, from her neck to the tips of her ears, and that was when Mr. Carl turned around.

“I’m sorry,” Ester stammered, “I heard yelling, and I thought—”

Ada bolted past her father down the stairs and shoved past Ester, picking up her skirts and fleeing for the door. Being more afraid of Mr. Carl than she was of Ada, Ester ran after her, calling her name.

She caught up to Ada in the garden, Ada gasping for breath and tears streaming down her face. Ester reached for her arm and Ada slapped her away. “What the _fuck_ were you doing in there?” she screamed.

Ester stared at her, and finally, all she said was, “Ada, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t tell me how fucking sorry you are,” Ada snapped. “Do you just come looking for trouble? Did you want to humiliate me?”

Ester didn’t mean to snap. “Don’t yell at me when I’m not the one you’re angry at!”

Ada looked like she wanted to say something truly awful, or maybe hit Ester, but she only gave a choked sob and sank onto the stone bench, shaking and crying. Ester sat next to her, put an arm around her shoulders and handed her a kerchief. Ada leaned into her side, breathing in rough gasps between her quaking sobs, and all Ester could think about was how fiercely she wished Nathan Carl dead. 

#

The Pierce house was grand in a way that still gleamed of newness, having been built shortly before the war. Aaron had never seen it except from the street when he sometimes passed in cars, but the entrance hall sparkled with deep blue tiles and soft gold lights.

If Aaron resented Pierce for anything, it was that the invitation had been extended to his entire family, and not simply him and his mother.

Daniel had brought his wife Rachel, and Aaron found both of them to be dull and insufferable, only able to talk about matters that related to Daniel’s hand in the steel industry, or their children, whose greatest virtue was that all three of them were terrified of Aaron and so avoided him.

Michael had gone into the clergy and thus was even worse. He spoke of his “flock” as if he ministered to the largest congregation in the Settlement, and not one that met in a building that had previously been a convenience shop. His wife, Phoebe, was forever embittered that they had no children, and openly jealous of her sisters-in-law.

He might have been able to suffer only them, except that their younger sister Tabitha was also there, with her husband Saul, and the pair of them only seemed able to talk about their own business, or whatever was most recent in the news.

It was with a fiendish sort of glee that Tabitha detailed for him whatever she had most recently heard had happened to some heretic—someone had been shot or drowned trying to escape the Bishop’s Men, someone had met the firing squad rather than repent—as if he didn’t know how close he had been to being one of them, or how he was to blame for their current predicament. She spoke about them the way she did because they weren’t real to her. To Tabitha, none of the heretics had ever been brothers-in-arms, or friends, or lovers.

Their lives were so unbearably small, and they seemed entirely unaware of the smallness of those lives. Aaron had tried to make conversation with his siblings a few times, since he had returned, and it was astonishing how little they understood. They couldn’t fathom what it was like to spend three weeks on the road, sleeping wherever the rain wouldn’t fall on your head, with no comfort but the person next to you and the knowledge that nothing lasted forever. They didn’t understand running through gunfire with a belly that only had fear in it, or how to turn fifty units into a week’s worth of food for two people.

With James, he had attributed the ignorance he once had to youth—and now he knew he should have termed it comfort.

He knew, now, what price glittering entrance halls came at, and though he didn’t loathe them as James did, he had learned to be skeptical of things that sparkled.

Miriam Pierce had aged well, her hair as red as it ever was and the shine in her eyes matured to something knowing rather than excitable. Elegant, quick-minded, thoughtful—everything a general’s wife ought to be. She had done well for herself.

Her smile didn’t waver, when she reached Aaron in her line of hellos, but the warmth went out of it, and Aaron guessed that she knew he had told Pierce about her affair with James, all those years ago.

He reflected on the memory, sometimes—captured in battle, Pierce exchanging him for some officer James had taken hostage. How he had goaded Pierce, knowing the then-major wouldn’t do anything to him, because he was too valuable.

Her two eldest children were there, introduced to them as Caleb (twenty-two) and Lydia (nineteen). Caleb clearly took after his father in build and hair, but he had his mother’s soft face and easy smile. Lydia was more petite, and had Pierce’s eyes, and was terribly quiet.

Pierce himself only appeared late in introduction, and tired of being left to last, Aaron strode forward with bold familiarity to clasp his hand with a cheerful, “General! How good to see you.”

He smiled, half daring Pierce to shrug him off, but Pierce surprised him, squeezing his hand and returning his smile. “Mr. Reyes, I’m glad you came. I haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting your family.”

Aaron held down the urge to gloat—that would come later—drawing Pierce along by the elbow. “My mother, Hosanna,” he said, pleased to be able to ignore his brothers for the moment.

“And what a lovely woman,” Pierce said, smiling at Hosanna as if he were flirting when he took her hand.

She smiled coolly in return. “It is an honor, General. I am pleased to know that my son has such noble friends.”

Pierce didn’t contest that they were friends, which was polite of him. It was somewhat more wearisome to introduce him to his siblings and their spouses, and Aaron supposed he ought to be grateful that his elder sister Joanna had gone away to Mallory with her statesman husband for the time being, so at least he didn’t have to bother with them.

Pierce had asked Aaron to introduce his family, letting everyone else know that it was Aaron he was closest to, and a bigger gift Aaron couldn’t have asked for.

He mistrusted it.

Seating found him about midway down the table, and though the food was good and the wine was better, he had nothing to contribute to conversation. His mind wandered, to less appetizing meals had in the ruined shell of a church, with water that had to be filtered and boiled, stale bread, and never, ever enough meat to really keep an army going.

Everyone was looking at him, and Aaron realized he had been asked a question. “Sorry,” I said, “afraid my mind wandered off, what was that?”

Caleb cleared his throat. “I was—well, Papa has told us stories about the war, but I wondered what it was like from your side, Mr. Reyes.”

His side, was it? Aaron supposed that was only fair. He considered his wine, knowing he ought not have any more. “It was dirty,” he said, “dirty and hungry and miserable. Probably should have died half a dozen times over but, here I am before you.” He smiled thinly. “And none of it was worth it.” He swallowed the last of his wine, and rose from the table. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I find myself in need of a cigarette.”

A houseman showed him to a balcony that overlooked the city, lamps glowing dimly against the black night sky. The Settlement looked beautiful at night, the humble start of a colony that had become so much more than their ancestors could have imagined.

He was only out there a few minutes when Pierce joined him. “I apologize for my son, he meant no harm.”

“I don’t care about your son,” Aaron said tersely. He paused, watching the end of his cigarette burn. “I meant it’s not his fault. I allow myself to get too comfortable and I forget just what it is I have to overcome.” He crushed the cigarette in his hand. “If you wanted to see me, General, you only had to say so.”

Pierce stepped to his side, looking out over the city. He looked younger in that quiet glow, the night wind in his hair. “After you’ve gone home with your family,” he said, “meet me on the corner of Bethlehem and Main.”

“And what’s there?” Aaron asked.

“A small property I own,” Pierce said, “where we won’t be seen.” 

#

Aaron’s head throbbed, and the right side of his face was sticky with drying blood. His own, he was pretty sure, probably from the blow that gave him the headache. Some red-faced Bishop’s Man had hit him with a rod or maybe a pipe, Aaron hadn’t taken a close look after it made contact with his head. Ruined a perfectly good shirt, too,  he thought, looking down.

Someone yanked him roughly to his feet by his arm. His hands were tied behind his back, and his shoulders burned. The soldier gave him a shove. “March.”

“Where?” Aaron croaked.

The barrel of a rifle poked between his shoulders. _“March.”_

Aaron went forward, his legs stiff from sitting on the cold concrete floor. The building that the Bishop’s Men had taken for their base, he was pretty sure had used to be a warehouse. The lights gave the room a sick green hue.

“Left,” the soldier at his back said, and Aaron turned left, wondering if he was going to end up in a ditch before the hour was over.

Some way to welcome his thirty-sixth birthday.

“Stop.”

Aaron felt lightheaded and dizzy, but he managed to notice a familiar face crossing the room. “Ah,” he said, smiling. “Major Pierce. How good to see you.”

Pierce ignored him, speaking instead to the soldier at his back. “Put that away. If you shoot him, we lose this exchange and God only knows what Metzger will do to Howell in revenge.”

Exchange—Howell—ah. James had got hold of one of Pierce’s, and Pierce had got hold of one of his.

“Untie him and bring a rag. If Metzger sees him looking like that he’ll make it his business to avenge the injury.”

“Sir—” the soldier started to protest.

“Are you deaf, Lieutenant?” Pierce asked coldly. “Untie him. Reyes isn’t fool enough to try anything when we’re about to set him free.”

“Well, you never know,” Aaron said. His hands were freed, and Aaron rubbed at his bruised wrists, swaying on his feet.

Pierce produced a chair, shoving at Aaron. “Sit down before you pass out.”

“Thank you, Major, that’s very kind of you.” Aaron sat, closing his eyes. He would never hear the end of it from James, about how he wouldn’t have been captured if he had stayed close and not gone out of his way to shoot Pierce.

He wondered how Pierce and James had negotiated the hostage exchange, what terms they had agreed to. Was James as calm as he was when they were exchanging for someone else, or was it different, when it was Aaron?

The lieutenant appeared with a damp rag that was dropped unceremoniously on Aaron’s face. “Clean yourself up,” Pierce said.

“Or what?” Aaron asked, pulling the rag off his face. “It’ll upset Metzger?” He smiled. “Can’t do much if I don’t have a mirror, can I?”

“I’m sure you’ll manage,” Pierce replied. “But you’ll do it, because you know what happens if Metzger loses his head right now, don’t you?”

He did. They were in a tight spot, in no position to be making another assault on the Bishop’s Men just yet, even with the city in such a precarious position. Another battle would be suicide for everyone involved. Even James couldn’t change that in a few days of negotiation.

Aaron wiped the blood from his face, wincing when he found where the skin had split. Pierce hovered nearby, going over something in hushed voices with another lieutenant under his command. He felt a little steadier when he was done—hungry and aching still, but he had gotten used to that.

“We’re going, now,” Pierce said, motioning for Aaron to follow him.

“So hasty, Major,” Aaron said, pulling himself up. “You keep moving like this, and it’ll be over before we even have any fun.”

“Shut the hell up, Reyes.”

“Language, Major! My, what would your good Christian mother say?” Aaron followed Pierce to a car, and was pushed into the back. There was only Pierce, and a driver.“Just the two of us, then?”

“We’ll have an escort at a distance,” Pierce said, “just in case Metzger decides not to uphold his end of the deal.”

Aaron thought like that sounded like an awfully convenient excuse to shoot him or James at the slightest opportunity. “Howell must be quite the valuable officer,” Aaron said. “What does he know that you don’t want James finding out?”

“I imagine just as much as you know that Metzger would prefer I didn’t.” Pierce gave him an appraising look. “The sooner I’m rid of you, the better.”

“Terribly rude, Major, we could have been friends, in a different life.” Aaron put his head back against the seat, watching the ruined city roll past.

Pierce scoffed.

“James was friends with your wife,” Aaron said, annoyed. “I don’t see why it should be so ludicrous that you and I might have gotten along.”

Pierce was rising to the bait, if only because he knew he wouldn’t have to tolerate Aaron for long. “Metzger must not have been that good of a friend, the way he avoids her now.”

“He avoids her because he fucked her.” Aaron was angry for a reason he couldn’t quite name, and the look of startled surprise that ran across Pierce’s face before he could hide it gave him no small sense of satisfaction. “Didn’t tell you that, did she? While you were off in your post, making a fine young officer of yourself, your pretty little fiancee got lonely and looked for comfort a little closer to home.”

“I’ll not listen you tell me lies about my wife because you’re pride is offended—”

“I hear she told him all about you while they were in bed together. Fine cotton sheets pale as orange blossoms. Too much a gentleman to talk about it in detail but I know him well enough to know it wasn’t his idea, and you know it, too. Headstrong woman, your Miriam.”

Pierce looked like he might kill him, and damn Howell. Aaron only smiled. “The two of them got along just fine, I’d say.”

The rest of the journey was spent in silence. Aaron tapped his fingertips against the window. Some houses were still burning. He couldn’t tell the difference between those salvaging their belongings and looters.

Pierce took him outside of town, in a low wheat field. James stood out on the road, an officer with his hands tied standing just in front of him. Aaron thought that Howell looked to be in remarkably better shape than he himself was. Pierce got out of the car, and opened Aaron’s door. “You go in front.”

Aaron obliged, walking down the road toward James. He couldn’t see them, but he imagined that James had posted a few sharpshooters down the grass, just in case Pierce decided to try anything. James started forward as they did, pushing Howell in front of him.

They met in the middle, and James pulled Aaron behind him, leaving himself wide open like a fool. “Pierce.”

“Metzger.” Pierce freed Howell’s hands, and looked back to James. “Next time we meet may not be so civil.”

“God willing,” James replied.

“Do tell Miriam hello,” Aaron said, “for us.”

James gave him a sharp look, and Pierce scowled. They parted, and James pulled Aaron along at a steady clip, to take them just over the hill and out of range of Pierce’s men. There was a truck waiting, to take them to wherever they had set up camp.

James stopped, looking at him closely. “Are you alright?”

“I’m starving and my head hurts,” Aaron replied. “But I’m alive, so that’s something.”

James pulled him into a rough hug, his cheek against Aaron’s hair. “Jesus Christ, I love you,” he whispered.

Aaron closed his eyes, putting his arms around James, pressing his face into James’ shoulder. “I know. I know.” 

#

_“I’m not looking for a husband,”_ Mrs. Randall tease, _“he’s just a friend, Sarah.”_

Ada put on a weary smile, doing her best to humor Mrs. Randall. “He was, then.” Hoping to redirect the conversation, she said, “I can’t thank you enough for how much help you’ve been, Sarah. I don’t know how I would ever have pulled this all together without you.”

“Of course, of course!” Mrs. Randall said, smiling bright. “It’s the least I could do, after everything you’ve done for us. A pity we don’t have a proper church for you to be married in.”

“I think the tavern will suit us just fine,” Ada said. “Pastor Richards conducted Mr. and Mrs. Li’s wedding out in the open when this place was still just a camp.” It had been quite lovely, the breeze keeping the heat from being oppressive and the river murmuring in the background. She might have done the same, if the season had been right.

If she had actually wanted to marry.

“Speaking of Mrs. Li,” Mrs. Randall said, “she’s had the processing kitchens in a tizzy. I can only guess what the dinner is going to look like, when she’s done.”

“I asked her not to overdo it, but I think that was a fool’s errand,” Ada said, looking around the empty tavern. Perkins had closed it so it could be decorated, and the next day, Ada would be married in it.

“It’s not every day you get asked to help with the landowner’s wedding,” Mrs. Randall said, still beaming. “And you two make such a remarkable pair.”

Ada turned away so that Mrs. Randall wouldn’t see her rolling her eyes. She had hardly had a chance to speak to Finnbar since they went to Richards for the marriage license, though maybe that was for the better. She would be seeing far too much of him, anyway.

The most she had seen of him had been a few days later, after he had gone to the brothel and found Micah gone and his room empty. Finnbar had come tearing across town to demand to know just what the hell was going on, and found her holding up a brand new jacket to Micah, seeing if the color suited him. “Ah, good, you’re just in time to meet our new steward.” She had smiled at him. “I thought with the growth of our household, it wouldn’t be fair to Mrs. Hammond to have her handle all of your concerns, as well. So, Mr. Deering here will be joining my—our—staff.”

Finnbar had looked at Micah, who smiled mischievously and said, “Pays better.” Then Finnbar had simply thrown up his hands and walked out, muttering something about how they were going to be the death of him, to which Ada had responded that he wasn’t permitted to die until she had found a suitable replacement for him.

Beyond that, she had been consumed with the business of creating this charade of a wedding, and evading Pastor Richards’ inquiries about her sudden and unexpected engagement. Three days previous he had shown up on her doorstep, with news about the impending law change. “Miss Carl,” he said, all concern and worry, “I am afraid you are rushing into an unwise situation and it is my job to interfere, if that is indeed the case.”

Ada hadn’t let him into her house. She had stepped out on the front porch, and closed the door behind her. “Pastor Richards,” she said, very softly, “what is unwise is you coming here with the intention of interfering with my wedding.”

“I don’t mean to cast aspersions, Miss Carl, but I believe, if your sole intent is to keep ownership of your land, that there are men better suited for you than Mr. Finnbar—”

“Like yourself?” Ada asked crisply, and watched as Richards’ soft round face went scarlet. “For your own sake, Pastor, I have pretended like I haven’t noticed your intentions, but that stops now. I am engaged to be married and it is beyond inappropriate for you to use your post to disrupt my marriage simply because you wish to be the groom.”

“Miss Carl, I had no such intent—”

“You did, and you do,” Ada said, cold. “And I will let you know now, Pastor Richards, that if you make any further attempts to interfere or otherwise prevent my marriage to Mr. Finnbar, absolutely everyone from here to the Settlement will know why you came to Carlston.”

Richards went ashy pale. “I—I don’t know what you mean, Miss Carl.”

“I think you do,” Ada said. “And if you would like the fact of your bastard son to remain between the two of us, you will marry me to Mr. Finnbar without interference, and you will never act toward me with those intentions ever again. Do I make myself clear, Pastor?”

“Quite,” Richards squeaked.

“Then that will be all,” Ada said, and smiled. “Good day, Pastor Richards.” 

#

The wind picked up, the day of the wedding. It howled down out of the hills and brought more rain with it, so that as James pulled on his suit in the back of the tavern, his regular clothes dripped where they were hung.

The damp had amplified the smell of pitch and old liquor inside the tavern, which almost put him at ease. It was a setting he understood, if not the situation.

Micah slipped back into the small room he had taken for dressing. James hadn’t yet gotten used to seeing him like that, dressed as a house steward in shirtsleeves and a smart-looking jacket, and polished new shoes. “More than half the town’s out there already, and all of them sopping wet. Hope Miss Carl doesn’t slip in a puddle.”

He paused, looking James up and down, and his smile was almost shy. “I’m not used to seeing you like this.”

“What’s ‘like this?’” James asked, trying to work warmth back into his hands.

“Like a landowner.” Micah stepped forward, putting his hands against James’ chest. “A quick kiss before you have to give one to the bride?” He grinned, that same playful smile, and James bent, hands on either side of his face to kiss him as if it were the last time he would have the chance.

There was a knock on the door, and James stepped back, the familiar weight of guilt settling in his chest. “Whenever you’re ready, Mr. Finnbar,” Webb said through the door.

James let out a breath, wondering if he was going to have to match Ada’s acting ability. It didn’t surprise him that the whole town was there—to do things quietly would have generated more gossip than it was worth—but it certainly didn’t make him any more comfortable with the whole thing.

“Big day,” Micah murmured, brushing his hands across James’ shoulders. He smiled. “Try not to look like you’re heading to your own funeral, yeah?” He bounced on his toes, pressing another, softer kiss to James’ mouth. Then in another moment he was out the door, and James had to steady himself, and step out.

Ada had orchestrated the whole thing like a play—her father was not there to give her away, so she simply met him in front of the pastor. For a moment, James didn’t recognize her. Her dress, her hair twisted and curled, face made up, a veil pinned at the crown of her head, not a spot of dust or mud anywhere on her. (Her glasses were gone, he noted.) Except for the weight of her gaze, she looked like an entirely different person.

James told himself not to look at their audience, or at Richards. He took Ada’s hands, her palms rough and calloused from work, and only looked back at her. A little ceremony, a little performance, and that was all.

Richards’ voice was strained, but except for a slight stumbling over the reading— _“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish.”_ —when Ada gave Richards an extraordinarily poisonous look that suggested she did not care for his choice of scripture, all passed without incident.

In his Sunday best, Henry Randall brought up the rings, identical silver bands that Ada had gone to Mallory to get. Then, with a white knuckle grip on his bible, Richards pronounced them man and wife, and with a chaste kiss they were married.

“Jesus Christ,” Ada muttered through a perfectly serene smile as they stepped down into what was rapidly becoming a celebration, “I didn’t even think to ask what he chose for a reading.”

“It could have been worse,” James murmured.

“I assure you it was with great care that he excluded _‘wives submit to your husbands’_ from that reading.” Ada glanced at him, her smile bittered slightly. “Enjoying married life so far?”

He laughed a little. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Think you can make it through one dance without treading on my feet?”

“I can certainly try.”

Someone had a fiddle for music, and though the tavern was fuller than it had ever been, room was made for dancing.

“Well, either you weren’t as bad as you claimed, or Micah is a diligent teacher,” Ada remarked.

“I think we can say that I’ve improved,” James replied. “I didn’t recognize you when I walked out.”

Ada laughed. “The mirror’s been showing me a stranger every time I tried the dress on.” She looked just past his shoulder and then back to him. “I’m sorry, by the way. I wish there had been another way around this.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” James told her. “It’s not as if we were given any other choice.”

“Yes, well—there are still some things we have choice over.” Ada glanced away. “I’ve been composing the wedding announcement all day, deciding what my mother should see when she opens that message.”

“And?”

“I debated waiting until we had a wedding portrait,” Ada said, “but I think I’ll send it out while everyone is celebrating. _With great celebration, we announce the marriage of Miss Ada Marie Carl to Mr. James Finnbar._ No warning, no explanation.” She looked at James with that bitter smile again. “Every bit as much courtesy as was given me. And the Devil take them both for putting me here.”

“I’m certain it’s some kind of bad luck to invoke the Devil at your wedding,” James replied.

“No worse luck than we already have getting married in the first place. But, I intend to make something joyful out of it.” Ada laughed. “The spiteful nature in me, I suppose.” She nodded in the direction of the man with the fiddle, and James noticed his guitar leaned up against the bar. “Someone mentioned in passing to me that he’d never heard you play, and seeing as we have a great many changes happening today, I thought maybe that could change as well.”

“I hadn’t gotten the chance to ask you,” James said, “why you made him your steward.” It had scared the hell out of him, to find Micah missing and have no idea why.

“Thought that would be pretty obvious,” Ada said. “It’s not fair of me to ask you to stay alone in my house now, is it? And more selfishly, I’d prefer not to hear muttering about how often my husband visits the brothel. Don’t misunderstand me, he’s still a steward, and will have work to do—but I thought he would make good company.” She glanced at the fiddler. “He’ll stop soon. I’m going to send the announcement to my mother, and then, if you will,” she flashed a grin, “play something I can _really_ dance to.” 

#

A storm was blowing in off the bay in Safe Harbor, rattling the windows of the house, when Susanna Carl heard the ping of a message. She finished latching the window and went to retrieve her phone, surprised when she saw that it was from Ada.

Ada never contacted her first, hadn’t made any effort to stay in contact since she left to build her town. She had been so furious, the last time they spoke, screaming that they couldn’t do this to her, that she wasn’t a child to be shepherded home because she had made them unhappy. When she had tried to calm Ada down, to tell her that they were only worried about her, her daughter had only shouted, “Go to Hell!” and ended the call.

So Susanna stared at the message before she opened it, not knowing what to expect, but hoping that maybe, after all this time, her daughter would come home. They could change things, she thought, they could put the past behind them.

Her heart sank through the floor when she read what Ada had sent.

_With great celebration, we announce the marriage of Miss Ada Marie Carl to Mr. James Finnbar, on October 23, 213_

Just that quickly, she had found someone to marry. Someone Susanna had never heard of, someone Ada probably didn’t even care for.

A moment later a second message pinged, a photo. Someone must have taken it for Ada, she sat against her new husband’s side, her hand on his chest, smiling not with joy, but with triumph. The husband—this Mr. Finnbar—had his arm around her shoulders, face turned to murmur something in her ear, but Susanna could see easily enough that he was quite a bit older than Ada. She had captioned it “Mr. & Mrs. Finnbar.”

Ada had sent this to spite her. She had sent it to pour salt in the wound, to make it clear that under no circumstances would she ever return home, that the girl who had declared with such stubborn intent that she would be a spinster all her life would rather marry a stranger than live with her mother and father.

Rage surged up through Susanna’s veins and she threw the phone across the room, where it smacked against the wall and went black, hiding the image from her sight.

Susanna pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes.

One daughter lost to the grave, and the other to marriage.


	15. A Disgraced Child

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Whoever robs their father and drives out their mother is a child who brings shame and disgrace.”  
> Proverbs 19:26

There was something to be said for the dark, Aaron thought.

The dark was secretive. Safe. The dark allowed for him to close his eyes, and imagine he was somewhere else.

With someone else. 

Pierce was hesitant, uncertain, but that made him easy to guide, and in the quiet moments after Aaron luxuriated in the comfortable flush of his own skin, remembering what it felt like to be warm.

Pierce was very quiet, sat on the edge of the bed gazing off at some point on the wall. Aaron rolled onto his side. “What’s the matter?” he asked, “Worried about God’s judgment?”

Pierce scoffed softly, and shook his head. “I don’t believe in God.”

Aaron stared at his back, at the myriad scars, the end of his missing arm. “Now that’s something truly shocking,” he murmured. “Hero of the Covenant, and he’s an atheist.” Even James was a believer, even after all that.

“Is that really the most scandalous thing about me?” Pierce asked the shadows.

“To some it might be.” Aaron settled onto his back again. “What do you think is the most scandalous thing about yourself? If you answer that it’s this, I’ll be forced to conclude that you’re a very boring man.”

“How do you do it?” Pierce asked, looking over his shoulder.

“Do what?”

“Act so… cavalier about it all.”

Aaron reached for what remained of a half-forgotten drink. “People like you will carry around all the shame in the world, like the act of carrying it will absolve you of your sins.” He looked at Pierce over the glass. “You punish yourself for your failings, then go back and fail your unrealistic ideals again, and punish yourself all over. You judge yourself before God ever gets the chance, but then—you don’t believe in God, so I don’t know how to help you with that.”

Pierce kept his distance, now, as if being too close to Aaron might compromise whatever principles he had left. “And what do you believe?”

Aaron smiled, shaking his head. “If everything that the preachers say about God is true,” he said, “then God isn’t going to be of much help to a soul like me. And that leaves me with a firm believe in me, myself, and I.” He emptied the drink. “The holy trinity.”

“And that’s enough for you?”

“Isn’t it for you?” Aaron looked at him. “If you’re an atheist, then I’m having trouble figuring out why you feel the need to keep being ashamed of your sins.”

“If you only believe in yourself, I’m wondering why you want to be a statesman.”

“I’ve had enough of only having power on the outside,” Aaron said. “And after everything I’ve been through, I’m not about to resign myself to an unremarkable life where all anyone remembers of me is my name next to John Metzger’s.” 

#

In the days after the wedding, there was almost a sense of peace. It nagged at Ester, a sense that it was a false peace, that soon enough the other shoe would drop and Carlston would be clinging to the edge once again.

“Isn’t worrying my job?” Ada yawned, stretching over the kitchen counter. “God, Star, we’ve just pulled back from the brink, I can enjoy that, can’t I?” She smiled and kissed Ester with the taste of tea on her lips.

Ada had put her wedding dress away in a box, where she wouldn’t have to look at it in their wardrobe. She had danced, really danced, for the first time in ages in that dress. Held her skirts out of the way and struck her dancing shoes against the floor like she meant to strike sparks with them. Maybe she was a little drunk—on alcohol or attention or on pure heady spite—and she had boldly cast a flirtatious smile across the room at Ester, held out a hand to her, and they had danced together at her wedding. Women friends could do things like that, after all.

And later, when they had struck home in the storm, Ada in the company of Mr. Finnbar and Ester going on ahead with Micah, Ester had peeled the rain-soaked dress off of Ada, wrung the water out of her hair, and put warmth back into Ada’s limbs.

Tangled together under the warm weight of a quilt, Ada had traced her fingers down Ester’s back, a soft look in her eyes. “I think we’ll be just fine.”

And maybe they would be. It had only been a few days—but it only took a few days for Ada’s mother to announce that she intended to visit.

“Mr. Deering,” Ada called, laying her phone face down and looking already weary. “I’ll need you to prepare a room for my mother.”

Micah was a warm presence in the house. Ester liked him, with his good humor and amiable nature. He worked quickly and without complaint, and already Mrs. Hammond was enamored with him, telling Ester as if confessing a secret that he was the sweetest young man she had ever met.

Finnbar took more adjustment. He made himself scarce with work, but on the occasion that he returned, it was with such obvious discomfort that Ester couldn’t help but echo it.

The announcement of Susanna Carl’s visit did nothing to ease matters. “She intends to stay through Christmas,” Ada said with despair.

“It’s because you antagonized her,” Ester said. “Now she feels she has to come take the measure of your new husband and determine whether or not she approves.”

“She’ll be determined to dislike him, you mean,” Ada muttered. “There’s no reason she needs to stay that long, except maybe to catch me failing at being a wife, although God knows she could do that in under an hour.” Ada sighed. “Think she’ll notice my husband and I sleep in separate rooms?”

#

The journey by train was delayed several times, due to the weather, and it gave Susanna a great deal of time to think.

Nathan had refused to look at the message, when she told him of Ada’s marriage. (Of course, Ada had not contacted him directly. Only the Lord Himself could have made her speak to her father, and even then, Susanna expected Ada would have put up quite a fight.) He instead descended into a rage, cursing Ada’s stubborn foolishness, and determining all kinds of horrible things about the marriage that Susanna prayed were not true.

Ada did not contact her again at all during all that time, but often she was there when Susanna called, keeping to her office while she waited for the floods in Carlston to recede. She did not yell, when Susanna called, but her voice was clipped and impatient.

In the past, Ada had always come with her Kelchak companion to retrieve Susanna from the station in Mallory, and when Susanna asked if that would again be the case, Ada replied, “No. James will be bringing me this time.”

Half of her had expected to hear Ada refer to her husband by his surname.

“You picked a miserable time of year to visit, Mother,” Ada told her, “the water’s just about gone back but the mud is so soupy, you wouldn’t know the difference.”

She wasn’t sure what to expect, standing under the narrow shelter of the Mallory station as a drizzle fell around her. She recognized the truck—and wasn’t surprised to see Ada descend first, without a proper coat. Ada jogged up to the platform as her husband got out of the truck behind her. He, at least, had the good sense to dress for the weather, but he hung back as Ada came up, giving Susanna a stiff hug and a kiss on the cheek. “I’m glad you made it safely,” Ada said. “Are those your only bags?”

“Yes, well. I would have liked your father to come.”

Ada looked away and waved to her husband to come up. “James, this is my mother, Susanna Carl, Mother, this is James Finnbar, my husband.” She held onto his arm as if to prove it, that even though she still insisted on wearing a vest and trousers, she was a properly married woman.

He inclined his head to her. “Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Carl.”

Polite, at least. She nodded. “Mr. Finnbar.”

The drive back to Carlston was very quiet. Ada told her a little of what had happened in the months previous, about pedes and dry weather. When she neglected to mention it, Mr. Finnbar shortly added that a boy had nearly been killed. “Yes, well, you and I took care of that, didn’t we?” Ada replied.

“Ada,” Susanna said, “why are you wearing glasses, now?”

As if he had been waiting for the moment, Mr. Finnbar spoke again, “Because she got bit by a Devil’s Tongue.”

Susanna’s stomach iced over. Ada slapped her husband’s shoulder, scowling. “Mother, don’t look like that, I’m perfectly alright. I just can’t see as well as I used to.” She gave her husband another dirty look. “Anything else you’d like to tell my mother without warning?”

Watching them together was odd. Susanna couldn’t say they didn’t seem close, because they did, but it was a different sort of intimacy than she might have expected. She couldn’t put her finger on it, the odd dynamic that existed between her daughter and… her new son-in-law. It would take time, to get used to that thought.

“Where are you from, Mr. Finnbar?”

“Janesville, ma’am.”

She had never heard of Janesville.

Everything she knew about her daughter, the very few boys she had known Ada to consort with as a girl—James Finnbar was nothing like any of them.

In one of his rages, Nathan had concluded that in some appallingly short time they would have a grandchild and it would be obvious to everyone why Ada had married such an inconsequential man. Looking at the both of them, Susanna wasn’t certain whether she wished it wasn’t true, or wished it was.

#

When Miriam considered her life, she believed she had done quite well. Some missteps here and there, perhaps, but overall, she had made a good life for herself. A life worth protecting.

She still spoke to Leah Finnbar, when they encountered each other at social events, at church. It was easy to speak to Leah, the both of them knowing what they knew, and being able to speak around it, to ask after each other’s children.

It was much, much harder to speak to Josephine.

In certain lights, Josephine’s auburn hair burned almost red. She had grown tall, like her father, the kind of woman that could best be described as strapping. No dainty thing, Josephine Finnbar. As a girl the boys had teased her, because she intimidated them, and Josephine knew why, and used it to scare them off, encouraged by Leah.

She had grown into such a good young woman. Mrs. Finnbar and Leah had brought her up in service, so that Josephine spoke to the beggar as easily as to the pastor or the statesman. Miriam admired that in her, was glad that Josephine had been brought up that way.

Miriam had kept her distance, while Josephine was young, afraid of the ache in her heart whenever she saw the girl, recognized some mannerism in her. The bold posturing that was just like Caleb, the ecstatic shout that she always mistook for Lydia’s—they unsettled and unnerved her. Even though she knew it was impossible, she was convinced everyone could see the similarities, could draw the appropriate conclusion.

She remembered going away to that house in the country with Leah, how her mother had made up the story that she was ill, and needed rest. She and Leah hadn’t been close, but all through those lonely days, Leah was at her side, arguing with the doctor, with the midwife on her behalf. Leah wasn’t afraid of shame. If shame were a person, Miriam could imagine Leah in a knock-down-drag-out fight with it.

Leah told Miriam stories about her family, and it was really only then that Miriam started to understand why Leah had such difficulty with her new life, and why James had tried so hard to reshape himself to it. Why Leah fought so fiercely against shame, and why James drank it like poison.

“What do you want to call her?” Leah had asked her one afternoon, as they walked through the garden. They knew she would be a girl, by then.

“You should name her,” Miriam said, “you’re the one who will raise her.”

“No,” Leah insisted, “you’re her mother, you choose the name, even if it’s the only gift you ever give her.”

Miriam had given Mary Josephine more than a name. She had given her a family who loved her, not in spite of her birth but because of it. Mary Josephine Finnbar had lived a much better life than Mary Josephine Hall would have.

She didn’t blame James for Josephine. It had taken the both of them, and he hadn’t known when he left, she could accept both of those things.

What she could not accept, what infuriated her every time she recalled it, was how he had refused to see her that summer in Paradise. The cowardice of it burned her, how he could disguise it by saying he didn’t want to cause her trouble.

She couldn’t have told him in a letter. It was too distant, and she had been terrified someone might read her messages. She had thought—hoped—that telling him to contact his sister would be enough.

Leah said he never had. Miriam couldn’t forgive him for that.

Just as she couldn’t forgive him for telling Reyes about their relationship.

She remembered with crystalline clarity the day that Samuel had returned to their home, for a few brief weeks while he recovered from an injury. She had gone to kiss him, and he had turned his face away. “I need to speak with you, later. Alone.”

“Is it true? Did you have an affair with Metzger before we were married?”

“Yes. It’s true.” There would be no lying to him. Adulteress she may have been, but Miriam wasn’t a liar. Defending herself would only make it worse. When he asked, the only explanation she gave him was, “I was young, I was lonely, I was bored, and he was there, and I liked him.”

Samuel had made his peace with it. By the time he learned of it, it was twenty years past and it wasn’t worth dwelling on, he said. She had been a more faithful wife than she had been a fiancee.

Miriam never told him about Josephine, and as far as she could tell, he had never guessed. Everyone always whispered about how much she looked like Leah, after all.

They never looked past that.

She wondered what it was Samuel thought she wouldn’t look past, when he invited the Reyes family to dinner. They had connections, they were of the proper society, all that was true—but they had never been close to the Reyes family, and the only one of them that Samuel could even claim as an acquaintance was Aaron.

Aaron Reyes, who in the ranks of heretics had been second only to James.

Aaron Reyes, who had done God only knew what to finance James’ war, who had helped him kill and burn his way through the Covenant, only to forsake him, and for what end? To make his way in politics?

Aaron Reyes, who had used her affair to make a low jab at her husband.

Aaron Reyes, who her husband couldn’t stop staring at during that dinner.

Did they think she was blind? Reyes wouldn’t care, she supposed, but Samuel—in their own house, in front of their children. In over twenty years of marriage she had never been possessed of the feeling of _hate—_

“Miriam?” Samuel stood in the door of their bedroom, his clothes still damp from the rain. He hadn’t expected her to be waiting for him.

She drew the curtains shut, and kept her back to him. “It’s quite late, isn’t it?” she asked, her hands still on the heavy velvet. “I can’t remember a time when you were home that you ever stayed out so late.”

“Miriam—”

“I don’t want excuses, Samuel.” She lifted her chin. “You were out with Mr. Reyes, weren’t you?”

The silence pricked at the back of her neck. “The things I trained myself not to see,” Miriam said, “the things I told myself to ignore because you were a good husband, an excellent father—” She shook her head. “Samuel, you cannot bring this into our house. What will happen to our children if you’re discovered?”

“I’ve been discreet—”

“Like I was discreet?” Miriam turned, her voice rising. The house had been so constructed that they would have privacy, even with raised voices. She didn’t fear her children or the staff overhearing. “With James? All things come to the light, Samuel, and you cannot control who will find out, or what they will do then.” The terror she had felt, when Samuel came to her asking for the truth, she wanted him to imagine even a tenth of that fear. “You could have sent me out a shamed woman and an adulteress and I thank God every day that you did not, but Samuel—!”

He would not look at her. Something burned at the back of Miriam’s throat, something poisoned and vengeful, something that just wanted to make him see. “I had his child.”

Samuel looked up, startled.

“James Metzger. I had his child.” Twenty five years and the secret had spilled out of her like a pot boiling over. “I was pregnant when he left, he never knew. I tried to tell him, when we met him in Paradise—”

“Miriam, don’t—” He started to turn away, to try to leave her as he always did when they fought.

“No, you listen!” She put herself between him and the door. “You listen to me, Samuel Pierce, because I can only keep so many secrets and I am so tired of this one.” She was shaking. “I tried to tell him, but he avoided me. He has no idea she exists and every Sunday I see Josephine Finnbar at church and have to keep my distance because if anyone knew—!”

“Miss Finnbar?” He said her name so quietly, stared at Miriam because he couldn’t believe. He had always said that her strained relationship with the Finnbar women was something he didn’t understand.

“If you tell Reyes,” Miriam said, “you will make a weapon out of her. That snake you’ve become infatuated with will use her as a tool to get his vengeance, and he will not care what happens to her. And you know better than anyone how James always sought his own vengeance in war.” He had lost his arm to that vengeance, and it could have been his life. She wanted him to be afraid. She wanted him to understand everything they stood to lose. “I will not let you endanger any of my children for the sake of your—lust.”

Samuel gazed at her, and he was hurt and Miriam didn’t care. “The war can’t protect you, Samuel. You will be found out, your name will be tarnished and we will all suffer for it. Caleb and Lydia and Naomi and Joshua. If not for me, then at least for them.”

Samuel looked as if she had wounded him, and kicked him while he bled. Miriam put a hand to his cheek, grief softening her voice. “I love you.”

He laid his hand over hers, fingers wrapping around her own. “I know.” 

#

James found Ada in her office while Mrs. Carl unpacked, her feet on her desk while she read something on the screen, a frown furrowed deep into her face. “What was that about?” he asked.

‘That’ was the cold stiffness with which Mrs. Carl had greeted Webb, as if Webb had personally wronged her. Webb had only said a polite hello and turned away.

“That’s between the two of them,” Ada said, “if Ester wants to tell you, she will.” She pressed a finger to her temple. “Close the door.”

James pulled the office door shut. “What is it?”

Ada looked up. “Thought you might want to know that General Pierce is looking for you.”

Aaron had orchestrated this. That was the first thing James thought, though he had no idea how Aaron had managed it, when he hated Pierce, and everything he represented. Or at least, that had been the case when James had known him. “When did you find that out?”

“Just now.” Ada sighed, laid the screen on her desk and pushed it away. “Well, a few weeks ago, actually, but I couldn’t confirm it until now. Thought it was just gossip. Makes for a good story, doesn’t it? Puts a nice tidy bow on things if he catches up to you. Very symbolic.” She rubbed her face, rolled her eyes. “They’ve been to Janesville, but then they holed up for the winter. Any idea where they might go next?”

“Depends on a lot of things I don’t know.” He doubted Aaron would be allowed much control, even as a repentant heretic.

“Fair enough.” Ada glanced up at the creaking of a board somewhere above them in the house. “She’s not as immediately hostile as I thought she might be. Give her time, though.”

Mrs. Carl had yet to do anything that seemed to deserve Ada’s wariness and hostility. She had been reserved, perhaps, but besides the incident with Webb, nothing. “It doesn’t seem like you’re being fair to her.”

“You don’t know her. Thank you, by the way, for the incredibly tactful way you handled telling my mother how I and Henry Randall almost died.” Ada dropped her feet to the floor. “What would I do without my mother fussing over how dangerous this place is?”

“Pardon me, I still haven’t quite forgiven you for scaring the hell out of me.” They hadn’t talked about it since the pray-out, and the way he had been kept at arm’s length while she recovered, the way she shrugged it off now with how her false lung had saved her life—it needled at him. She hadn’t seen herself as she was then, losing her mind to a venom.

“Well, if you were hoping to ingratiate yourself with my mother, congratulations, I think you’re well on your way.” She drummed her fingers restlessly against the desk. “The last time she was here, it was after that pede nearly killed me, while I was still recovering from half a dozen surgeries. She’s convinced this place is a death trap.”

“I’m not certain she’s wrong,” James muttered.

“If you side with my mother, I swear to Christ—” Ada cut herself off, scrubbed her face with one hand. “This isn’t about my mother.” She looked at him, a puzzled frown on her face. “Is this really about the Devil’s Tongue?”

“You almost died,” he said, “and after that, no one would tell me anything or let me anywhere near you unless you asked for me. So, yes, I’m a little sore about that, still.”

“I’m sorry,” Ada said, “I had no idea.” She glanced away. “No one will do that to you, now, of course, but… I am sorry, for that. If we want to be partners in this, then that can’t happen again.” Ada stood. “It won’t happen again.”

James nodded. “Thank you. Although, ideally, I’d prefer you weren’t near death’s door at all.”

The corner of her mouth tugged up in a smile. “Well, I can only promise you so much.” She reached for her coat. “I’ve a mind to take a walk, while it isn’t raining. Care to come with me?”

“Where are we going?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Ada pulled her hat down from the rack. “I need to talk to you, anyway. Somewhere there isn’t ears in every wall.”

Over the next few days, James learned to avoid Ada and Mrs. Carl when they were in the same room. It wasn’t that Ada was always combative (she wasn’t) or that her mother always rose to the bait (she didn’t), but sooner or later a spark would find tinder, and the aftermath of a fight would ripple through hours or days.

“She makes excuses for my father,” Ada said one night, after her mother had gone to bed. “That the way he treats me is my fault, because of my temper, never mind that Becca was the sweetest thing that ever lived and he treated her the same way.” She never elaborated much on just what it was her father did, but it was always Mr. Carl who was the source of the conflict between the two women, and when Ada was obliged to spend time with her mother, James found  it best to make a reason to leave.

The one thing he couldn’t work out was the deep animosity that Mrs. Carl seemed to bear for Miss Webb. The scornful remarks, the outright hostility—he didn’t wonder that Webb began to accompany him on his excursions out. “She considers me a poor influence on Ada,” was all she said when he asked. “Blames me for the fact that Ada won’t return to Safe Harbor.”

It seemed like there was a great deal more than that, but Webb didn’t want to tell him, and so he didn’t ask.

“Best you stay out of it,” Corbley told him. “Ain’t never gonna be any peace when that woman comes around.”

“It’s awful,” Micah whispered at night, tucked against James’ side. “Even when they’re not fighting, you can tell how much Mrs. Finnbar doesn’t want her to be here. She’s miserable, and when she’s miserable, everybody else is, too.”

‘Miserable’ was one word that could have been used to describe Ada. The way Corbley put it, “she’s as pissed off as a pede that’s just been shot in the face with rock salt.”

Mrs. Carl didn’t really speak to James. She didn’t seem to know what to say. James didn’t know what, if anything he could say to ease the tension between Ada and her mother—because everything he said to Ada only seemed to make her angrier—so it built, and it pressurized, and about two weeks into Mrs. Carl’s stay, it detonated.

Mrs. Carl had risen earlier than she normally did, and apparently had seen Webb coming out of Ada’s room, and determined it the last straw.

James was midway through a cup of coffee when Mrs. Carl appeared in the dining room door, red-faced and shaking with anger. “How can you allow this?” she demanded, pointing back up the stairs. “Allow your wife to—to—”

“Mrs. Carl,” he said, not knowing where Ada was but knowing she was bound to investigate, “please calm down—”

“Do you know what she is?” Mrs. Carl demanded, a shrill pitch to her voice.

James decidedly did not care for the direction this encounter was headed in. “What Ada is?”

“No,” Mrs. Carl said, then, with the scorn back in her voice, “Miss Webb, who is sleeping with your wife, is—”

The kitchen door banged open and Ada roared in like a storm, overpowering whatever her mother had been saying. “Get the fuck out of my house!”

Mrs. Carl’s face lost it’s color. “Ada—”

“Get out!” Ada pointed at the door. “You get out of my fucking house or I swear to God—”

James wrapped both arms around Ada and dragged her out into the hall, while she fought and let loose a stream of profanity that was remarkable even for her. “Webb!”

Webb appeared at the top of the stairs and rushed down. “What’s going on?”

Over Ada’s raging, James managed to get out, “Explain to her that whatever she doesn’t want her mother to tell me, throwing her out will only make sure she tells the whole town!”

Webb took Ada into the parlor, where at least the awful things she was shouting at him were somewhat muffled. Micah poked his head around a corner. “Alright?” he asked, looking a little more unsettled than he usually did.

James nodded, and drew in a breath, stepping back into the dining room with Mrs. Carl, not about to let the woman believe she had actually been thrown out.

She turned to speak to him, and James held up a hand. “Don’t. I don’t know what you were about to say about Miss Webb, and I don’t want to know. Hearing it from you will only make Ada angrier, and I’m not inclined to find out if her aim is still as good as it was.”

Mrs. Carl bit her lip. She tried to speak again and again James spoke over her. “I have tried to speak to Ada on your behalf a dozen times since you’ve arrived and every time she has refused to listen to me, and I doubt this will make her any more sympathetic. So do you want to be right, or do you want your daughter to speak to you again?”

She was silent. James took his half-finished coffee back to the kitchen and announced that he was going out. He could still hear Ada from the parlor, but her rage had been redirected at her mother, and the last thing he heard before the door shut behind him was, “She has no right and I don’t want her in my house!”

It was remarkable, really, the amount of work James could produce for himself, when he needed to stay busy. He got more done that day than he had in the previous four, and only went home when it got dark.

He was hanging up his coat in the hall when Webb found him, her face clouded. “We need to talk.”

“Do we?”

Webb grimaced. “There will be other incidents such as this one, and I would rather you hear it from me than someone else.” 

#

The only person who had spoken to Susanna all day was Ada’s steward. Mr. Deering seemed quite young, to be a house steward, but he smiled warmly and asked if there was anything he could do for her, and Susanna was grateful for that. He brought her tea and chatted a little, told her about the wedding, how it was raining but everyone had been in good spirits. He laughed, telling her how nervous Mr. Finnbar had been.

Ada kept to her office, apparently no longer determined to throw Susanna out on the street, but not wanting anything to do with her.

Webb stayed upstairs, and Susanna did not see her at all until, hearing Mr. Finnbar return, she came down to speak to him in the sitting room. Susanna had taken up post in the dining room, unable to sleep and reading her bible by lamplight.

Mr. Finnbar tapped softly on the door, drawing her attention. “Mrs. Carl,” he said, sounding very tired, “what I know now, that I didn’t know this morning—it changes nothing.”

She stared at him. “How can you say that?” That he would permit such a thing to occur in his marriage at all, let alone that he would permit it knowing what Webb was, was unthinkable to her.

He came to the table, sat down across from her with a sigh. “I would not have married Ada if her hand hadn’t been forced. I expect you know that.” He gazed levelly at her. “I know what their relationship is and it makes no difference to me what Miss Webb might once have been. Even if it did, I’m not fool enough to even dream of stepping between them.”

“Why did you marry my daughter?” Susanna asked. “Her, I understand, at least that far—but you…”

Mr. Finnbar folded his hands, considered his answer. “I admire her,” he said. “I admire the way she runs this place. We don’t agree on everything, God knows, and I find her temper to be her worst quality—but she’s a good woman, when she’s given the chance to be.” He glanced at Susanna. “And I owe her my life about three times over, by now.”

“Is that all?” Susanna asked.

His answer to that was swift. “Why did you marry your husband, Mrs. Carl?”

Susanna went quiet. Her parents had encouraged it. It had been an advantageous match for her, even if Nathan was a younger son. He had seemed like a sweet man, then.

Mr. Finnbar nodded, and stood. “Ada is a good woman, Mrs. Carl,” he said again, soft. “If you could let go of whatever it is you think she ought to be, you would be better able to appreciate what she is.” 

#

Ada was out on the porch swing with a drink when James found her. She glanced at him, and back out at the river, still high and threatening to overflow its banks once again. She could hear it, more than she could see it, water rushing along the soggy, crumbling earth. “And how is my mother?” she asked, pressing the cool glass to her temple. She wished her mother hadn’t come, that an unannounced marriage would have been enough to make her finally cease contact with Ada.

“You don’t want to talk about your mother, do you?”

“No.” Ada shifted over to make room for him to sit, her feet tucked under her. “But what I want is rarely what matters when it comes to my parents.” She lowered the glass, took a drink. “What did you say to her?”

James settled back, his legs long enough to almost reach the porch rail. “That we’d all be better off if she left you alone.”

Ada snorted. “Good luck with that.”

“I think I understand a little better, now, why you’re so protective of Miss Webb.” James was looking at her through the dark.

“I’d have killed myself in Safe Harbor if it weren’t for her.” Ada sighed. “That was how we got to my dowry. Told everyone we were engaged. My parents were pleased, it was a good match. My father brought out my dowry and the first thing we did was go to the Settlement and buy the plot of land west of Mallory.” She smiled, at the memory. “Had to pay for scouts to see if we could make any money off of it, and that’s when we found out we could mine it. Spent the last of our money on that investment, set out here and never looked back.”

She emptied her drink, and shook her head. “I was this close to naming the damn town Freedom or Promised Land. Something like that.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Figured if the Carl name was going to end with me, I could at least preserve it this way. The last apology I ever made to my parents.” Ada looked at him. “Do you ever think about the names that have died out, since this place was settled? The family lines that disappear, are absorbed.”

James shifted, looking out through the dark. “Can’t say I do, no.”

“Is your name—your actual name—going to go on without you?” Ada asked. “Or did it die the day you came here?”

James was quiet, when she asked him that. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t even know if my father had other family. Janesville was my mother’s town.”

“My grandmother used to keep extensive family records,” Ada said. “Births, baptisms, marriages, deaths. Suppose I get it from her, that obsession with the family name. She said we weren’t anyone, without what came before us.” The Carl name wasn’t hers, anymore. Now she wore a man’s false name as her own, and in some way she supposed that a false marriage deserved a false name.

“Were you close with your grandmother?”

“She was the only person my father didn’t dare challenge.” Ada emptied the glass, pressed it to her temple once more. “I was her first grandchild to live past infancy. I suppose she thought that made me special.” She felt so lonely, talking about her family.

James reached between them, squeezing her shoulder. Ada let out a breath. “I’m sorry for what I said to you this morning. Truthfully, I was angry enough I don’t remember much of what I said, but Ester tells me it wasn’t pretty.”

He sounded amused. “I’ve been called worse, by people I liked better.”

Ada laughed. “Still. Wasn’t you I was angry at.” She didn’t know how she was going to make it until Christmas. “She doesn’t have any goddamn right to go around telling other people’s secrets.”

“She thought she was doing the right thing. She’s been corrected.” He let go of Ada’s shoulder. “It’s spending all this time in the house with her that’s making the both of you like this. I can take her around the town a little bit tomorrow, if you like.”

Ada looked at him, surprised. “Should I start praying for you now? I’d call Pastor Richards to have him pray for you, too, but I think he’s busy praying for your untimely departure from this life.”

“By all means, I can suggest to her that she ought to spend more time with you.”

“No, no, do take her,” Ada said. “Absolutely, get her out of my house for a day. It’s just that no sane person would volunteer for anything like that.”

“No sane person would marry you as a favor,” James countered, smiling.

“Fair enough. I ask a lot of things no one should agree to.” Ada stood, stretching with both her arms over her head. She retrieved her empty glass, and patted James’ shoulder as she passed him. “Goodnight, Mr. Finnbar.”

“Goodnight, Mrs. Finnbar.”


	16. A Star Over Bethlehem

The thing Josephine disliked most about Christmas parties was the men. They were loud, rude, frequently drunk, and uniformly believed that—being a spinster—Josephine ought to be grateful when they approached her.

It made her miss Isaiah Allen all the more sharply. He had been a good friend to her in her school days, never leered at girls like other boys did. Her mother speculated that it was because Isaiah preferred the young men, but Josephine hadn’t cared. She didn’t want the relations that came with marriage, and if Isaiah had asked her to marry him, she would have said yes, and gone back with him to that grim seaside city he told her about. He would have been a good husband.

Then he had gone away to war, and he hadn’t come back. 

Josephine spied a man approaching her across the room and turned away as if she hadn’t noticed, making her way to where her grandmother sat, nursing a glass of dark wine and watching the festivities. “Hello, dear,” her grandmother said, taking her hand. “I’ve been watching that gentleman over there make eyes at your mother all evening. He’s finally worked up the nerve to talk to her.”

Josephine followed her gaze and grimaced. “He’s barely older than I am.”

Her grandmother smiled. “Leah’s not so old, you know.”

“Yes, but he’s hardly what I’d want from a step-father.” Josephine sensed the man in her peripheral vision, and steadfastly ignored him.

“Your mother is a chronic flirt, but I’ve never known her to be a fool.” Her grandmother squeezed her hand. “You’re about to be ambushed.”

The man stepped into her field of vision, smiling. “Ah, Miss Finnbar, is it?”

Josephine gave him no friendly smile, no coy expression. “We’ve not been introduced,” she said flatly.

The man seemed taken aback. “Forgive me, my name is—” Josephine wasn’t listening to his name, though, and very quickly she found a reason to leave, some bored comment about how she didn’t care for dancing. She wandered across the ballroom, taking a drink from a houseman with a tray, and took herself to a more discreet corner, where she could watch the revels undisturbed.

It seemed she wasn’t the first person to have that idea. “Miss Finnbar,” a voice said, “how good to see you. Merry Christmas.”

Aaron Reyes raised his glass slightly to her, smirking. He had dressed handsomely for the occasion, his usual dark red jacket exchanged for a newer one in deep green, with polished gilt buttons. She didn’t know who he wanted to impress, hiding back in the shadows as he was. “Don’t care for dancing?”

“Not with that sort of man, no.” Josephine wondered what Reyes was doing there, on who’s invitation he had come to the Hall house. Perhaps someone had made the mistake of thinking his family wouldn’t bring him along.

“I’m curious what ‘that sort of man’ is,” Reyes said idly. “The kind that stalks you like a dog on the hunt, or the kind that approaches you at all?”

“Is there a kind of man who doesn’t approach a woman like a hungry dog?” Josephine asked.

Reyes laughed. “If I may promise you,” he said, “I will never approach you in that manner.” He leaned against the pillar behind him, a hand in his pocket, as if he were too bored to enjoy the party. “In any case, I’m relatively certain that man has a wife.”

“Do you know him?”

“He’s an acquaintance of my brother’s,” Reyes said. “I’ve only met him once. Funny, I didn’t think he would like tall women, short as he is.”

“Do you care much for parties, Mr. Reyes?” As far as small talk went, she had had worse, with less interesting people.

“Hm. I used to.” Reyes gave her a cool smile. “Back when I was someone people cared to invite to parties. And you, Miss Finnbar?”

Josephine watched the people dancing, stately boring dances. “They were more fun when I was a girl. Then they became full of expectation, and now,” she shook her head. “Now other women whisper about how much they pity me.”

“There are worse things than being pitied. For instance, you could be married.”

Josephine smiled, in spite of herself. “How is your search going? There must not be any sign of my uncle, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“Very astute,” Reyes said. “General Pierce recommended we pause our search over the winter. That’s all I can tell you.”

“Of course.” Josephine looked away. “Do you actually think he’s still alive?”

Without hesitation, Reyes said, “If he was dead, I would know it.”

Josephine glanced at him, but Reyes wasn’t looking at her. “That’s an odd thing to say.”

“Is it?” He considered his drink. “What do you think of the wine?”

“I think you’re diverting the conversation. Wine has never been my favorite.”

“What do you drink, then?” Reyes asked.

“If you believed my uncle was dead, would you still be looking for him?”

“You seem to have a curious fascination with a man you’ve never met.” Reyes eyed her, as if trying to determine what she wanted from him.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Josephine replied. “He’s my mother’s brother. But very well, you don’t wish to speak of him.”

An uncomfortable silence fell between them, and Josephine was just considering leaving when Reyes spoke again. “Stark was sulking for days after you rejected him. It was delightful to watch. I feel like I ought to thank you.”

Josephine rolled her eyes. “Did you know he was coming to see me?”

“No, or I’d have tagged along to be a thorn in his side. The last thing any of us needs is someone getting too involved with your uncle’s kin.” Reyes glanced at her. “Do you smoke?”

Josephine gave him a cool smile. “I thought you weren’t going to approach me or get involved, Mr. Reyes.”

He laughed, and laid his hand over his heart. “I swear on the blood of Christ that I have no dishonorable intentions toward you whatsoever. I’ve only tired of smoking alone.”

“I’ll accept on one condition,” Josephine said.

“Oh?”

Josephine ran her thumb along the lip of her glass. “Tell me how a poor Janesville boy convinced a Reyes heir to follow him to war.”

Reyes considered her for a long moment, and very slowly, he smiled. “Oh,” he said, “James would have liked you.” He pulled out his cigarette case and nodded towards a balcony. “Don’t burn through it too fast, or I won’t have time to finish the story.” 

#

“She likes him better than she likes me,” Ada said, sitting on her front step. Her mother had, very begrudgingly, started to speak fondly of James, of what a diligent and respectful man he was. She clearly thought he had made a mistake in marrying Ada.

“I’d say that ain’t true, but, well. It is.” Corbley shrugged. “Don’t get too hung up on it, yeah? It ain’t personal between them.”

Ada shook her head. “Every time she comes out here, I keep letting myself hope that it’ll be different by the time she leaves.” She put her chin in her hand. “That somehow, now, she’ll stop blaming me.”

Corbley bumped his shoulder against hers. “That’s a fool’s wish, and you know it is.” He turned his head, the spines he was still growing tapping gently against each other. “You two ain’t never gonna get along as well as you’d like. Too stubborn for that.”

Ada pressed her palms together, staring at her muddy little town. River weeds had sprouted during the flood, and when the water receded they left a blueish slime on everything. “This is such a lonely place,” she said. “So lonely, and so damn difficult.”

“Come on, now,” Corbley said, “Ya said you wanted to visit Mrs. Li, and that ain’t no mood to be puttin’ yourself in.”

“Yes, right—God. I hate this mud. The water is one thing, but this—” She shook her head, and tucked her pant legs into the tops of her boots.

“It’ll flood again soon enough,” Corbley said, standing. “Put on your good face, now, you’re still a new bride, after all.”

Ada snorted. “I’m not going to see Mrs. Li’s new baby so that I can talk about my marriage.”

“No, but they’ll be lookin’.” Corbley flicked a claw against the brim of her hat. “And it’s better ya don’t look so gloomy.”

“Don’t I always look gloomy?”

“No, usually you’re a better liar’n that. Ya want me to carry you so you don’t get those pretty shoes dirty, or are you gonna hurry up?”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.”

Normally, Ada liked these visits—seeing someone after they had had a new baby or some other special occasion. All the times before, though, she hadn’t been a married woman.

“Mrs. Finnbar!” Mr. Li said with a broad smile when he opened the door. “So glad you could come, please, come inside!” He ushered them in, smiling over the dark circles under his eyes.  

“I brought a gift,” Ada said with a smile, holding up a bottle of wine. “My husband sends his congratulations.” She had told James the Lis had had a baby girl, and he had said, ‘oh, that’s nice.’

Corbley stayed to chat with Mr. Li, and Ada slipped back to the bedroom, tapping on the open door as she stepped inside. Mrs. Li was laid against her pillows, but perfectly awake. She smiled, seeing Ada. “You’re in luck, she’s sleeping like a dream.”

“How are you?” Ada asked, coming around to the end of the bed.

“Tired,” Mrs. Li said, “she was a hard one. Gideon never gave me half so much trouble.”

“Has Dr. Boulos been by?”

Mrs. Li nodded. “He and the midwife declared both of us healthy.”

The baby was in a cradle next to the bed, tiny and pinch-faced, bundled in her blanket. “May I hold her?” Ada asked.

“Of course.”

Ada was careful, scooping the baby up in her arms. She stirred, but didn’t wake. She was so light, so small. “Does she have a name yet?”

“Elizabeth, after my mother.” Mrs. Li sipped at a glass of water, closed her eyes. “Beth, for short.”

“Hello, Beth,” Ada murmured, tracing a fingertip over the curve of that little cheek. “What a remarkable girl you’ll make.”

Mrs. Li watched her with a tired smile. “Going to get yourself one of these, soon?”

Something twisted in Ada’s gut. She smiled, shrugged her shoulders. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.” She pressed a kiss to Beth’s forehead, and laid her back in her cradle. “I’ll let you get your rest, come back a little while later,” she told Mrs. Li, smiling. “She’s beautiful, just like her mother.”

Ada held it together as she went back to the front of the house, congratulating Mr. Li again. She held it together when he offered her a glass of wine, and she declined. Her face didn’t falter until the door had closed behind her, and she turned away from the house.

“I ain’t seen that look in a while,” Corbley said.

Ada shoved her hands in her pockets. “Yeah, well—it was easier to ignore, when it was impossible.”

“You talked to Finnbar about it?”

“A little.” She tipped her chin up. “Told him not to give me an answer, then, but he didn’t seem too eager.” She knew it was a lot to ask, especially of someone who had married her to carry on a sham at her behest—but it still pained her. She was closer than she had ever been to the possibility, and it stayed just out of reach.

“Don’t look like that,” Corbley chided, pulling her arm through his. “Ain’t nothing wrong with wanting a proper family.”

“It isn’t ever going to be _proper,”_ Ada said, “I don’t care about that. Just…” To have one at all. To take what would have been denied to her. It was one thing to slam the door shut on social convention, it was entirely another to reach for the handle, and find it locked.

“S’alright, I understand.” Corbley patted her hand. She never quite got used to it, the dull scales scraping the back of her palm.

“I keep thinking that if Ester and I had just… before we came here…”

“Then ya’d have a bastard and be even more of a scandal than y’already are.” Corbley’s eyes slid in her direction. “Ya couldn’t have cared for a baby here, then.”

He was right, and Ada knew he was right, and she hated that. “Suppose it would look odd if I adopted a child in my first six months of marriage, or should I wait? I’ve already waited five years what’s another two?”

“Ah, you’re just upsetting yourself, now.” Corbley tugged on her arm. “You said he ain’t given you an answer yet, and you only talked about it the once.”

“Don’t let me get my hopes up,” Ada replied. 

#

The night air smelled of wet pavement. It was really too cold to be out there long, but Josephine never complained.

Aaron could almost admire it, the way she relentlessly asked questions, pursuing a more complete picture of the uncle she never knew but clearly disguised. There was no game to it, no dance, but Aaron was happy to feed her stories, to tell her about the James he had known.

“He was obsessed with early church history. When I first brought him home, whenever I couldn’t find him, he’d be in the library, looking for the oldest history books. I must have heard a thousand times about how the church only came to power because the intended secular government collapsed, and there was no Earth contact to run to and make things better. Will of God, some might say, but not James. He attributed it all to men hungry for power.”

“By some, you mean the church,” Josephine said. Her cigarette was burning down between her fingers without her taking more than a single draw. Quoting, she said, _“The Lord saw the sin that had befallen the people of Earth, and in the Settlement He saw the opportunity for a new covenant with His children.”_

Aaron laughed. _“A Testament for the People of the New Covenant._ James hated that book. Quoted from it with such disdain.” He exhaled a cloud of smoke into the breeze. “Always told him he was going to get himself in trouble, talking that way about one of the most important books in the Covenant.”

There was something about Josephine’s hunger simply to _know_ that Aaron liked. It didn’t demand he justify himself, or tell her anything but the way he saw it. She listened, she asked, she dragged the whole goddamn story out of him.

He told her about how James had first begun to build a following. “He didn’t mean for it to be like that at first, see. He had this absurd idea that people would just rise up in unison. He was the person who made them see, though, or if they already saw he gave voice to it. Identified for them everything they already believed.”

“So he just—talked to them?”

That’s how it had started. People James befriended in bars or in rings. People who ended up bringing their own friends to talk with him, to listen to him. People who believed that John James Metzger was truly something special.

“He was the prophet of a new age,” Aaron said, waving his hand in the air. “At least, that’s what they said.”

“Did you believe it?” Josephine asked.

“James did, after a point.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Aaron chuckled. “Stubborn as a bull. Fine, perhaps I did. I was young, foolish. As given to being dazzled as anyone else.”

She flicked her cigarette away into the damp dark night. “But not anymore?”

“No. Not anymore.”

“The war started just before Christmas, didn’t it?”

December twenty-third. It had started on December twenty-third, in Christchurch, on the border of Kelchak territory. Aaron remembered that day better than he remembered what he had done that morning. “It did.”

“Tell me about it.”

“No.” He crushed the last of the cigarette under his heel. “I’ve told you more than enough, for one cigarette.”

Josephine considered him for a moment, and she nodded. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Reyes.”

He watched her go back into the party, and as he stepped inside spied her rejoining her mother. Two tall women with the same face, attending to a tiny elderly woman—what an odd set they made.

A head of bright red hair appeared at his shoulder. “Mr. Reyes.”

“Mrs. Pierce,” Aaron said, putting on a smile. “How fortuitous, I was just wondering if your family was here.”

Miriam gave him a cold look, cradling her glass close to her deep blue gown. “Stay away from the Finnbar women.”

Aaron’s brows rose to his hair. “And why should I do that?”

Miriam’s smile was as frosty as the interior of an aged freezer. “Stay away from them, and I’ll pretend I don’t know that it’s you my husband goes to see at night.”

So that was why Pierce had been avoiding him. He would have to work around that.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” Aaron said with a shrug. “I barely know the Finnbars, and can’t say I wish to become better acquainted. I find the daughter especially to be stubborn and more trouble than she’s worth.”

“She is that,” Miriam said, and turned away. “Do wish your mother well, for me.”

#

James thought, at first, that Ada was sick.

She didn’t eat, was listless and unfocused, and when he asked if she was alright, she had just waved him away as if he were an irritating insect.

Webb pulled him aside. “You should know,” she said in a low voice, “today is the day that Rebecca died.”

There were rents that had to be collected, and Ada stayed at home. Corbley met James under the eaves of the tavern, and asked grimly, “How is she?”

He returned that afternoon to find Ada on the back of the porch, leaning on the rail as she watched the river. He watched her for a little while, and without turning, Ada asked, “Do you want something?”

“You’re not yourself.”

“Stunning observation.” There was too much weariness in her voice for it to have any bite.

James joined her at the rail, watching the muddy brown water rush by. “Miss Webb told me this was when your sister passed.”

Ada said nothing to that. A drizzle had started up, pattering against the roof.

“Did her suicide—”

“It wasn’t a suicide.” Ada stared past the river, at the sodden fields.

James glanced at her. “You told me she threw herself in the ocean.”

“I know what I said. It wasn’t a suicide.” She leaned against the corner post, as if she couldn’t quite stand on her own.

James tried to find the best way to phrase the question. “Did her death have something to do with the man who… took advantage of her?”

Ada looked startled. “How did you—?” She paused, looked away again. “The Devil’s Tongue.”

“You mistook me for him.”

“So I did.” She put her head against the post. “He was a business partner of our father’s. Married, of course, over twice her age. Three kids at home.” She gave a bitter laugh. “I should have noticed something was off with her, but I was so wrapped up in Ester… I wouldn’t have noticed if the town burned down.” Ada closed her eyes. “Didn’t even know she was involved with anyone until she asked me to take some of Ester’s medical books, so she could figure out how to force a miscarriage.

“I was the one Father always accused of being a slut, see, not Becca. I told her we could go away somewhere, I’d take the baby and the blame, but she refused. Told her I’d take her to an abortionist, but she said no to that too. Somehow she had it figured it would be less of a sin if she made herself miscarry.”

The rain picked up steadier, turning into a proper downpour. “Read her diary after she died,” Ada said, “found out that the brilliant idea she had was to give herself hypothermia. She’d had it before, when she fell out of a boat, once. Thought the cold would do the trick. She was gonna go down where she’d be found pretty quickly, wasn’t stupid enough to think she could make it home on her own, I guess.

“Some fishermen spotted her down on the rocks,”  Ada said, “they saw her, and they saw the wave that pulled her down into the water.”

“Jesus Christ,” James muttered.

“Oh, I’m not done yet,” Ada said. “We never got her body back. Buried a box with some of her things in it, instead.” She rubbed her face. “Told my parents it wasn’t a suicide. I wanted them to know what that man had done to her. And then my father slapped me so hard I saw stars, and he said if I ever told a lie like that again, he’d make it so I was afraid to open my damn mouth ever again. Wasn’t like there was an autopsy that could force him to believe me.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ada turned her head to look at him. There was a certain way old anger looked on her face, weary and tempered. “Thank you.”

“Are you going to be alright?”

Ada nodded. “Eventually.”

#

Susanna thought it odd, how quiet Ada’s house was. There was a fairly persistent murmur of conversation between the cook and the steward, but the walls muted the noise, and even the creak of the stairs seemed softened, dulled, as if the house were a cocoon, meant to shelter its own secrets.

She spent her afternoons, when Ada and her husband were busy, in the sitting room, reading. The light was softer in there, and every so often Mr. Deering would appear to ask if she wanted something to drink. It was near enough to the door, too, that she could hear everyone coming and going.

Ada announced herself with a call of “hello,” which was usually answered by Mr. Deering or Miss Webb, and, as she often did, Ada looked in the door of the sitting room, saw Susanna, and passed by without a word.

A few moments later she returned with a picture frame in her hands, her eyes downcast. She stepped to the chair across from Susanna, and laid the picture down on the table.

Susanna recognized it—a portrait that had gone missing when Ada ran away. Her and Rebecca. She had always known Ada had it, but to see it, to be presented with it, made something constrict in her throat.

“You know why I can’t go back to Safe Harbor,” Ada said. “I’m not coming home, Mother. Ever.”

Susanna touched the bottom of the frame, forced herself to speak. “I already lost one daughter.”

“You lost us both.” Ada clasped her hands together. “I’m not saying this to hurt you, Mother. It’s only… we can’t keep doing this.”

Susanna looked up. “This?”

“This thing where you come to Carlston whenever you please, to drop in on my life and tell me how I’m doing it wrong. Where you try to convince me to come home. To convince me that my father only has my best interest at heart.” Ada spoke about her father with a sneer. “I can’t do it anymore.”

Susanna’s fingers curled into her palm. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that you don’t come here without an invitation anymore.” Ada gazed steadily at her. “Not if you expect to be put up in my house.”

Susanna looked at the portrait again, at her two girls smiling, faces still round with childhood. “What would warrant an invitation?” she asked. Ada didn’t reach out, she only lashed out.

Ada shifted in her chair, and when Susanna looked up, she was staring at the closed door. “If…” Ada said, “if I had a child, you could come then.”

Susanna sat up a little straighter. “A child? I thought—your marriage—”

Ada held up a single finger to silence her. _“If._ That’s between me and my husband.”

“What about your father?”

Ada’s expression flickered, looked pained. She moved her gaze to the floor, her hands on her knees. “You couldn’t stay in my house, if Father came. There are rooms in town.”

“Ada—”

“I won’t have him in my house.” Ada gave her a hard look. “Don’t try to ask my husband. He’s not stupid enough to invite that trouble.”

Susanna bit her lip. “And if you were hurt?”

“That would depend on whether or not you can be civil to Ester.”

Susanna looked down. “I see.”

Her girls looked so alike in that portrait. Smiling and bright-eyed, Ada’s eyes already shining with mischief. Dark haired, dark eyed, heart-shaped faces. Not a mean or spiteful look in them. “You were such a sweet girl,” Susanna murmured.

Ada stood, and moved for the door, as if she couldn’t bear to be there another moment. “Yes, well—your husband trained that right out of me.” 

#

Micah had never been to a Christmas service, before. He had started going to church on Sundays, but found it terribly dull.  People either smiled at him, pretending they didn’t know what he had used to be, or kept noticeably away from him, pulling their children to their sides, as if they thought he was going to steal them away.

“Don’t pay them no mind,” Mrs. Hammond whispered to him, “it’s their sin to judge.”

The tavern smelled musty from the damp, and became too warm, with everyone packed in, shoulder to shoulder for Christmas Eve. There wasn’t room to sit, Micah felt a little like there was barely room to turn around.

James was near the front, with Mrs. Finnbar and her mother and Miss Webb. Micah watched him, when the press of bodies separated enough for him to see anything. James had often muttered about how he didn’t like the church services, how uncomfortable he was there—but he at least knew what he was supposed to do. Micah had to follow by example, guessing and fumbling.

Some of the hymns, he knew. You didn’t have to be church folk to have heard the music. Everything else, though, was new to him. The only prayer he knew was the Lord’s Prayer. He knew some of the stories, but he had never heard them read from the Bible.

Pastor Richards spoke about the choosing of Mary, the star over Bethlehem, the grace of Christ’s birth. “The light of that star shines over the Covenant even now,” Pastor Richards said. “Through the grace of Christ, God made man, our people preserve the sanctity of that covenant.  We, my friends, have been chosen to be holy people, free of the sinful world of our forebears. This is the promise of everlasting life.”

Holy people? Whatever sins had abounded on Earth, Micah thought they must have been truly awful, if the Covenant was holy.

He was glad when the service was over, and he wasn’t obliged to wait around. Mrs. Finnbar made a toast in the dining room, to family and prosperity.

Micah waited until Mrs. Carl had gone up to bed, and slipped up to James’ room, sliding into bed and curling around his back. James stirred, and mumbled, “Mm—hullo.”

“She’ll be gone soon, won’t she?”

“Just after the new year,” James sighed.

Micah was tired of sneaking past Mrs. Carl, keeping quiet. The holy fury that had thundered through the house that morning with Miss Webb—Micah would prefer to avoid a repeat.

It was odd, being a steward. A proper job, a respectable one. He didn’t dislike it. It was dull, sometimes, but so was the brothel. He had a salary, now, and a handful of smart jackets in deep blue, tailored just for him.

“You don’t need to accept, if you don’t want to,” Mrs. Finnbar had said, when she talked to him in Daisy’s office. “Nothing will change, if you say no.”

To say yes, though, everything changed. Women in the brothel sometimes left, married and made respectable. Men never did. Men in the brothels either died there or in prison.

He missed the gossip, the people he knew and liked—but they all understood. Very few of them would have said no.

James shifted, lacing his fingers through Micah’s. “If you fidget anymore,” he mumbled, “I’m going to roll over and smother you.”

Micah smiled, nuzzling the back of James’ shoulder. “Alright, old man.”

James grumbled something Micah didn’t hear, but that was alright. Micah closed his eyes, and settled in to sleep. 

#

Susanna Carl left on the third of January, and James saw her off with Ada, waving from the platform in the Mallory station. Ada’s shoulders relaxed the moment her mother was out of view.  

She was quiet, until they were on the road back to Carlston. She had her arms hugged across her chest, and for once, her feet were on the floor. “I wanted to talk to you about… what we discussed previously.”

James had wondered when this would come up again. What he had mistaken for a lack of enthusiasm evidently had been a great deal closer to a discomfort with expressing the want. He had been to the Lis house after her initial visit, seen her cradling baby Beth with an entirely unselfconscious fawning, forgetting everyone else.

He stared down the road. “I wouldn’t have thought that was something you wanted.”

Ada picked at her nails. “Because of the way I dress and the way I live?”  

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“What can I say, I’m full of surprises.” She looked away out the window. “If you want to tell me no, then just say it and get it over with.”

James let out a breath. “That’s not what I’m trying to do.”

Ada put her forehead against the window, and for a moment the only sound was the hum of the engine. “What are you trying to do, then?”

“I’m just… trying to understand.” He glanced at her. “I’ll be enough trouble to you if this little charade we have falls apart, without that, too.”

The fields rolled past, green wheat sprouting in the mud. “You didn’t seem too worried about the trouble you’d cause me when you came to me for a job.”

“I was just your hired hand, then.”

“I don’t think the difference would matter much, to the church.” Ada crammed one foot against the dash, putting her hands around her knee. “I can deal with that trouble, if or when it comes.”

“I don’t know what kind of father I’d make.” His father a drunk, a violent one.

Ada giggled out of nowhere. “Have you seen how you are with the Randall children? I’m not worried at all. And you have the significant advantage of not being anything like mine.”

It was raining again, cocooning the sound within the car. “What happens if something happens to me?”

“Please don’t tell me you think so highly of yourself that you think I can’t raise a child without you.”

“I meant would you tell them about me.”

That made Ada quiet. “Do you mean about who you were? And the war?”

“Yes.”

She tapped her fingers against the door. “Seems like Micah knows more in that regard than I do, but I wouldn’t hide it from them. Better they hear it from me than someone else.” Her voice softened. “I’d rather that something didn’t happen to you, though.”

The edge of Mallory grew closer, the pale blue trees blending away against the grey sky. Odd, how quickly he had become used to this place, to how removed it was from everything else. “I don’t think I have the luxury of assuming it won’t.”

“Then I guess the question is how you want to spend whatever time you have left.” Ada leaned over to fiddle with the heat.

“Why is this something you want so badly?” It sounded colder than he meant it to.

Ada withdrew her hand, sat back. “I don’t think I used to think about it, back in Safe Harbor. It seemed inevitable. When Ester and I came out this way, though, I realized… I realized there was no way I could do it, without causing such a scandal that I lost the respect of everyone. Money only controls so much. I didn’t become keenly aware of it until it was impossible.”

She heaved a sigh, pressed her palms together like she was praying. “I used to read prints of your speeches. They were hard to get, just before the war. Too much risk that the Bishop’s Men were fishing for heretics. I had to burn them when I was done, but there was one—I read this one part so many times I still think of it. _Everything we have, we make or we take. What you can, you must make, and what the church would deny you on the basis of your sins, you must take.”_

“Not one of my better works,” James muttered.

“That’s not the point. People like us, we aren’t supposed to have families of our own. Not unless we’re prepared to suffer in silence until we die. The church doesn’t want us to make the choice out of love, out of joy. Keep your head down, keep silent, meet your judgment. But to make a family in our own way, to have what they would deny us and to have it joyfully—that’s as good or better than any war.” Ada gazed at him. “So what do you want to do?”

It seemed like there was going to be a flood again soon. The trees bent under the weight of the wind and rain.

James hadn’t let himself think about family, about what that meant, in a long time. There had been a time, living in the Settlement with Sarah Finnbar, where it had seemed like it would be a possibility, if he just lived the right way, put away the parts of himself that would prevent it. That had been fleeting, gone the moment he was branded a heretic.  

This was entirely different.

Chances were, Aaron would catch up to him sooner or later. Ada seemed to believe sanctuary would be enough, he wasn’t so convinced. Whatever would happen to him when he was taken by the Bishop’s Men, he wouldn’t leave it alive.

So he could live in fear of that, or he could make something of his life, in the meantime.

_How do you want to spend whatever time you have left?_

James stopped the car, and turned to look at her. Ada tensed, not knowing what to expect. He made up his mind, and he nodded. “I’ll do it,” he said. “I’ll do this with you.”

Ada took a moment to absorb it, disbelief flickering across her face, and then the broadest smile he had ever seen her wear. She lunged across the space between them, throwing her arms around his neck. She whispered a fierce, “Thank you,” and sat back, bursting into a fit of giggles. “Oh, Lord,” she said, catching her breath. “Things are going to change around here.”


	17. Not Peace, But A Sword

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about James, in those early years that Aaron knew him, was that he couldn’t be content with doing nothing. He had to be occupied, either combing through Nahum’s library (much to the chagrin of nearly everyone in the house) or, when he wasn’t reading, pestering the house drivers to teach him how to drive.

“Why would you bother learning?” Aaron asked, stretched out on a divan in his rooms, half-dressed. “It’s not like you have a car.”

“Because drivers make better pay for less and more reliable work than builders.” The building work had dried up in Paradise, and most of the people James had met through that had moved on elsewhere. The only reason he stayed was because of Aaron. 

“You keep acting like I’m going to throw you out on the streets,” Aaron said, pouting.

James leaned over him, drawing a knuckle along Aaron’s narrow chest and up under his chin. “Are you sure you won’t?”

Aaron grinned. “Not yet.” He held onto the front of James’ shirt. “I like your face too much.”

When he had learned to drive and grown bored with that, he found a guitar, and spent God only knew how many hours teaching himself to play. “Do musicians make better money than builders, too?” Aaron asked.

“No,” James said, “it’s just something I can do.”

He sang, sometimes. Not often, he seemed embarrassed by it. James had a low voice that was pleasant to listen to, not so much suited to some of the church hymns, except the melancholy ones.

Aaron had a memory of a sweltering summer day on the edges of town (because now James could drive them somewhere, they didn’t need Nahum’s drivers spying on them) under the shade of an aged and gnarled apple tree. He was leaned against James’ back, even though it was too hot to be that close, half-asleep in the dull afternoon, and James was singing, something low and soft that Aaron couldn’t remember the words to, now.

When he thought of the early days, when he thought of the reason that he decided to stay with James when Nahum grew tired of Aaron and kicked him out, he thought of that day.

“You’re doing what?” James asked.

James told him he ought to go back to the Settlement, that staying with him wouldn’t be like what he was accustomed to. It would be hard and frugal and they would have to go wherever the work was.

Aaron told James to give him half a goddamn chance to show that he was just as capable of making money. “Your problem,” he told James, “is that you’re too honest.” Too honest to gamble, let alone cheat, too honest to figure out what a wealthy man might not want his wife to know, and be willing to pay to keep the secret. Too honest to depart with some of Nahum’s best silver and what Aaron knew to be the three books James returned to most.

They followed building work to Franklin, rented a room that wasn’t terrible, but wasn’t much bigger than the space required to hold the bed and a single bedside table. The bathroom was such that Aaron could have washed his hands in the sink while he stood in the shower. No matter—he spent most of his time outside of the room, anyway.

James went out to work while it was still dark, and when the sun came up Aaron went out to call on the wealthy families. Most didn’t know him, but they didn’t need to know him—they knew the Reyes name, and they let him in. He kept his eyes open, made friends with people that looked promising, and where it was evident a few pieces of silver wouldn’t be missed, relieved the household of a few luxury items that would fetch a handsome price sold to the not-quite-wealthy who had the ambition of appearances.

In the evenings he met James at the ring, and while everyone else watched the fight, Aaron quietly relieved more than a few would-be gamblers of their funds.

Petty theft, James didn’t mind. Blackmail, though—that bothered him. Aaron didn’t talk much about it, and the closer the due date of their rent, the more James turned a blind eye to it.

Every so often, if the situation required, Aaron could prevail upon his mother or one of his brothers for money, but he preferred not to. He had his pride.

It wasn’t a bad life. The rattling pipes in the boarding house, the thin walls, keeping their clothes in suitcases under the bed—it took adjustment, but it wasn’t bad.

James seemed to get used to the idea that Aaron wasn’t running home anytime soon. He started to allow himself to refer to the future with “we,” and “our.”

Aaron fell asleep while James read by lamplight, scrawling his thoughts in a cheap notebook that he concealed in the lining of his suitcase with their money. Aaron asked him once why he hid it. “Because it’s heresy.” He confessed it so easily, with Aaron’s head in his lap.

“You’ve already been branded for that.” If he were arrested for heresy again, things could be much, much worse.

“I know.”

“You could be killed.”

“I know.” 

#

The wet season was drawing to a close and Aaron needled at Pierce to begin the search again. It was the one area in which he and Stark found their interests aligned—the sooner they started looking for Metzger again, the better. Pierce grumbled that haste would show their hand, and make them easier to evade.

Aaron’s motives weren’t wholly about James. Pierce hadn’t been alone with him since Miriam had discovered them, and Aaron suspected that distance from his wife might make Pierce more congenial.

He was watching an end-of-the-season heavy rain from an upper floor of his brother’s house when a houseman found him, to tell him that there was a woman requesting him by name. Aaron wasn’t entirely certain what the skeptical and disapproving look the houseman gave him meant, but he guessed when he went down to the parlor, and found the woman.

She was in her fifties, at the youngest. It was difficult to tell, she had the look of someone who had been prematurely aged by a difficult life. Once, she would have been fairly tall, but she had started to stoop at the shoulders, as if dragged down by the weight of her past. She looked familiar, though Aaron was certain he had never met her before. Certainly, she wasn’t dressed like anyone he would know from his family’s circles. Her dress was worn and faded and the buttons didn’t match. “Mr. Aaron Reyes?”

“Yes,” Aaron said. “Forgive me, I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”

“You wouldn’t,” she said, inclining her head. “My name is Ruth Price—but I think you would know me as Ruth Metzger. I understand you’ve been looking for me.”

Aaron stood dumb for a moment. He recovered, and said, “You’ve been very difficult to find, Mrs. Price. Please, sit. Would you care for some coffee?”

“Yes, please,” she said, taking chair. “It’s harder to shake off the chill, these days.”

Aaron sent a housewoman for coffee, and sat across from Price, studying her. When last he spoke to James, the man had not laid eyes on his eldest sister since he was ten years old, not corresponded with her since he was in his late teens—and yet he considered her as good as his mother. “May I ask how you heard about our search?”

“I visited my sister Hannah’s family. I’ve traveled a lot, since I left Janesville. That’s why you had difficulty tracking me down.” Her speech was affected, to cover up a rural accent. “You’re looking for my brother.”

“Yes.”

“So am I.” Price smiled thinly. “My nephews told me you thought he might have gone back to his family. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen or heard from him. If I had, I wouldn’t be here.”

There were no rings on her fingers, but Aaron counted three on the chain around her neck. Mrs. Price was a widow, it seemed. “Is that what you came here to tell me?” Aaron asked as the housewoman returned with a tray.

“No,” Price said. “I came to see you for myself.” She waited for the housewoman to pour her coffee and leave. Her face was harder to read than those of her siblings’. Aaron had the sense that Price was accustomed to concealing her emotions, perhaps even detaching from them entirely.

“Oh?”

Price looked at him the way she might a disappointing meal. “When he was fifteen my brother confided in me in a letter that he was afraid for his soul. The boys at the school that always cornered him into a fight could sense he was different, and they punished him for it. I told him then that he had to do what he had to do to survive, and I couldn’t give him those answers.” She looked him up and down. “You were not what I expected.”

Aaron lifted his cup to her, smiling. “You found me some years too late, I think.”

“Did I?” She gazed at him. “You want him dead.”

“I want him to repent.”

“That’s impossible.” Not a moment’s hesitation, not a doubt in her voice.

Aaron sipped his coffee, stared back at her. “I understand,” he said, “that he is your brother and you care for him—but when was the last time you spoke to him, Mrs. Price?”

Price smiled, a detached smile that didn’t affect her eyes at all. “You spoke to Leah, I heard?”

“Yes.”

“How similar to Jamie did you find her to be?” Price stirred sugar into her coffee, hands steady. “After our mother died, I was the woman of the house. Too young, but there was no one else, and they needed me. Hannah was a straightforward girl with simple ambitions—marry, have a family, live as well as she could. She tried to make the best of everything, she buried her anger, pushed it away. Leah—Leah let her anger burn where everyone could see it. Lashed out against everything, and she could forget what she was angry about just as quickly, and the grudges she did keep, you always knew about them.

“But Jamie,” Price cradled her cup, “I always thought Jamie was the most like me. Not quick to anger, but, once there, entirely unforgiving.”

Price sipped at her coffee, looked at Aaron. “Do you think I’m wrong?” 

#

There was a military base just outside of Franklin. Being near the border, the church being ever suspicious of Kelchak influence, there were always soldiers around. What it meant was that in the light of day, James kept his head down, didn’t draw attention to himself—and a good sixty to seventy percent of the men he went up against in the ring were soldiers looking for a little extra cash.

They hated James. It was bad enough that some civilian kept leaving the floor slick with their blood, but they could all see he was branded. They were holy men, and he was a criminal.

Soldiers talked, and paid fees to fight him, and eight times out of ten, they lost. James looked like hell most of the time, but he shrugged it off, because he made the ring so much money, men paid so much to fight him, that the prizes he earned for winning grew bigger and bigger.

The notoriety that ‘Lazarus’ gained had one other consequence.

It brought Lieutenant Pierce to the ring.

Aaron was lightening a man’s wallet when he spotted Pierce across the room. James was between fights—he had gone through the first well enough he was sticking around for another, catching his breath. Aaron worked his way through the crowd, ducking over to where James was sat. “Our old friend is here,” he said, nodding across the room at Pierce.

James spotted him, and cursed under his breath. “The hell does he want?”

What he wanted, apparently, was his own try at Lazarus. Pierce usually fought at more legitimate rings, but as he couldn’t bring James to him, he had to bring himself.

There was quite a line to fight James, and the man who owned the ring either picked the one who looked like he would make the best show, or the one who paid the highest price. Aaron didn’t know which Pierce was, but when James dropped into the ring, so did Lieutenant Pierce.

James was more experienced with fights, but Pierce was better trained. Aaron had seen James in difficult fights before, seen him giving someone hell even with blood dripping down his face, but the fight with Pierce was just ugly.

It went on for ages, both of them bloody and neither of them knowing when to quit. Pierce threw James back against the boards, James would come back with a punch that sent blood spraying. Pierce would have him on the ground, James would get an elbow into Pierce’s face. Grappling in the dirt, blood all the way down their chests, fighting like they were going to tear each other’s hearts out with bare hands or teeth.

Aaron got so wrapped up in it he forgot he was supposed to be thieving.

It ended when the owner intervened—Aaron suspected simply because he didn’t want James to get himself killed, or worse, be guilty of killing an officer in front of a room full of witnesses. Pierce walked away with the victory and the prize, a fact which burned Aaron to no end as he pulled James out of the ring, barely able to stand. He wasn’t the only one displeased. Any man who wasn’t a soldier was booing.

The cut-rate doctor at the ring stopped the bleeding and put James’ dislocated shoulder back into joint, but all he offered for anything else was a swig of whiskey, and it was Aaron who had to wash the blood off of his face and chest, Aaron who had to drag him back to their room and into the bed, and Aaron who had to walk back out into the night and hunt down some back-alley pharmacy that would sell him mid-grade painkillers without asking questions.

James couldn’t work for a while, after that. What little they had saved vanished, and by the time James was on his feet again, Aaron was asking his mother for money.

A more virtuous person would have been able to say they never complained, but Aaron did complain, and loudly. “If you had just thrown the fight when you realized you couldn’t win it, you stupid fuck—”

“You can win any fight, if you outlast.”

“You weren’t going to outlast, you were going to _die.”_

It wasn’t the last time they fought. Pierce came back, apparently dissatisfied with his win, and again it dragged on and again it was ugly, and the soldiers ended up on one side of the room and everyone else on the other, and Aaron was surprised a riot didn’t break out. Maybe because of that, the ring owner intervened sooner and called it a draw, split the prize between them, told them to get out and get patched up.

The third time, James put Pierce on the ground, and nearly put him in it. It took three men to drag him off of Pierce, and more than a few booing soldiers spit at him, but it was clear he had won, and Aaron and James were careful on their way out, the fattest prize they had ever taken under James’ coat.

Shortly after that, James decided there was better work elsewhere, and they left Franklin—and Pierce—behind them.

Aaron supposed it was sometime around then that James first talked to him about changing things. “Preachers, landowners… Bishop’s Men… they aren’t any holier than the rest of us. They’re just men. They ought to be held accountable like men.”

“And how are you going to make that happen?” Aaron asked, leaned against James’ shoulder in the shelter of the dark train.

“A system as deeply entrenched as this,” James mused, “it’s like an overgrown thicket. Only way to make anything useful out of it is to uproot it, or burn it all down.” 

#

Reyes took Ruth to sit through an official interview, which was dull and tedious and insulting. It was conducted by a man named Stark, who spent ages verifying that she was who she said she was, because he found it too convenient that Reyes had produced the last sister out of thin air. Ruth submitted to a thousand questions about Janesville, her family, even her husbands.

“Mr. Reyes here reported your name as Ruth Park.”

“My first husband, Elijah. He was killed, in a car crash.”

“And Mr. Price is your second husband?”

Ruth hadn’t the faintest notion why this was important, and even Reyes looked annoyed. The room was cold and the only relief was a cup of mediocre tea that Reyes brought her after his third disappearance for a cigarette. “Third. My second was Jacob Halpert. He took his things and some of mine and disappeared two years later, the church generously granted me a divorce after my husband’s abandonment.”

“And Mr. Price?”

“Matthew is dead. Killed in the war. You’ve seen my sister, haven’t you? I’m having trouble with why it’s so difficult for you to believe that I’m Ruth Metzger.”

“I apologize,” Reyes said as they left, sounding almost sincere. “You see, though, I could hardly say you turned up out of the blue and told me you hadn’t seen James, without actually producing you.”

As if she gave a good goddamn what Reyes had to go through. “Where would I find Leah?”

He gave her an address, offered to drive her, but Ruth couldn’t bear the thought of being in a car with that man, listening to him smugly tell her what her own brother was like.

Ruth pulled her hood over her hair and took to the rain. She had never liked the Settlement much, found it claustrophobic and cold. She found the Finnbar house without too much trouble, looked at it from the gate. This was where Leah and her daughter lived? Out of a Janesville shack and—into this?

Ruth had never even dreamed of a house like this. When she had married Elijah, she had considered it lucky that his life meant she would never stay in one place long. The lack of money, the hardship of traveling that much had never bothered her, until he died. The actor’s troupe had let her stay, doing the cooking and the washing as she had while Elijah was alive, but the traveling life had lost its appeal for her.

She was twenty five then, older than some, but still young enough to attract a husband.

Jacob Halpert told her he sold liquor, and he did sell that, as well as her jewelry and whatever else she had that looked valuable. She was relieved when he disappeared.

If she had ever truly been in love, she supposed that Matthew was the closest she had come. It caused a scandal in his family, when twenty year old Matthew brought home a widowed-and-divorced twenty eight year old. He was sweet, and quiet. Matthew worked repairing cars, it was the one thing he seemed to truly understand. Ruth went out to his workshop sometimes, and even though she only understood about half of what he told her, Matthew was happy to explain whatever he was working on.

He wasn’t the most effusive man, but he always treated her well. Never so much as raised his voice to her. Never seemed to mind that they didn’t have any children. “Are you unhappy?” he asked, when she brought it up.

“No.”

“Then I’m not unhappy.”

And then… the war came. Crossfire during a battle, no way to tell who killed him, or if they even meant to. She was too old to remarry again, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

That left a woman with precious few choices.

She spied a houseman coming to investigate and retreated from the gate, going down and across the street, walking back up to the house that sat just across from the Finnbar’s. Every large place like this had a back exit used by the staff, and it was just such a door that Ruth sought out, ringing the bell until someone answered. A thin girl of about sixteen opened the door, gazing apprehensively at Ruth with wide, pale eyes. “Yes?”

“I’m looking for work,” Ruth said, “is the steward or stewardess in?”

The girl nodded. “Yes’m. I’ll take you to her.” 

#

It was no wonder the church latched onto rumors about their relationship as quickly as they did. The moment John James Metzger became a problem to them, so too did Aaron Reyes.

It was too easy for them, really; the first place James talked to people about changing something was in the queer bars. He got half a drink in him and he started giving history lessons. His favorite topic was the exile towns, all the heretics and sundry who had been forced out in the early days. “For all we know,” he said, “their descendants could still be out there, and what would prove more strongly that the church is only here by chance, not the will of God?”

Most didn’t believe him. Enough did.

“I’m not trying to make you nonbelievers,” he told them, “I believe in the Holy goddamned Resurrection of Christ, not the preachers, not the Bishop’s Men, and not the church.”

But where he won people, where he really won them, was with this: “Who gives a fuck if we’re sinners? You think the preacher who accosts women on the street isn’t a sinner? You think the Bishop’s Man who takes bribes to let places like this keep running, and then spends those bribes in a brothel, isn’t a sinner? Who the fuck did Christ die for if not for us? Each man’s judgment is his own concern, not the street preacher’s, not the Bishop Man’s, not the entire fucking church’s!”

Because after everything, it boiled down to exactly one question:

“Who says you don’t deserve a life because of your sins?”

James didn’t even know anyone was writing what he said down until someone handed him a copy. That was when he decided to start writing tracts of his own, and it was never hard for him to find someone who could distribute what he wrote. He signed them all the same way— _J. Metzger._

And for that, they had to begin assuming false names. Somewhere in between Chapel and Gethsemane they stole a truck so they didn’t have to risk traveling by train. It was hard and it was terrifying and it was nothing Aaron had ever prepared for—and it never once occurred to him to leave.

They were sleeping out under an open starry sky when James pushed Aaron’s hair out of his face and told him he loved him. Aaron stared back at him through the dark, kissed him, and said, “You know what I just realized?”

“What?”

“We’ve been together for almost six years now.”

James considered that number, and looked at Aaron again. “I should have said it sooner.”

Aaron wasn’t sure he agreed. 

#

Ruth first saw Leah’s daughter on a Sunday afternoon when the sun was shining. She was hanging the wash out to dry in back of the Tailor house, and the gate was open to allow for the delivery of materials for the roof repairs, when she caught sight of a head of ruddy-brown hair, and a woman who didn’t look much different from herself.

Leah wasn’t a skinny little eleven year old anymore. She wore a handsome maroon dress with a modest collar and pearly buttons, carrying her jacket folded neatly over her arm. Her hair was smartly done, Ruth could only guess at the number of pins holding it in place.

The daughter was in deep blue, her hair in ringlets that bounced from the comb at the crown of her head. She walked with her arm through Leah’s, and they laughed over some joke, closer than Ruth had ever been with Leah.

She watched them until they disappeared from her view, her heart beating its way out of her ribs.

Clutching the edges of a sheet in her hands, Ruth wondered where James was. Was he as lonely  without their family as she was? Did he regret losing contact with them?

Was he as much of a stranger to her as Reyes seemed convinced he was?

She wanted to believe he wasn’t, that whatever James had been through in the years since they last wrote, that he was still fundamentally what she had known him to be—good, and sincere.

If James still lived, then Ruth hoped that he was so well hidden, no one would ever find him. She hoped he was happy, that he was safe.

She hoped that wherever he was, he had found some peace.


	18. Down in the River

Midway through the dry season, the river had grown slow and ponderous, though the water still made James’ skin prickle. He stood where it was chest-deep, running wet hands over his face and back through his hair. He had been baptized in a river like this one, baptized with all the other young men and women his age in Janesville.

_In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I baptize you into the One Church of the New Covenant, to serve and defend it with your life, against all threats, within and without._

James tilted his head back to look at the cloudless blue sky, not a breath of wind. An infant was baptized to protect their soul. A fourteen year old was baptized to ensure their loyalty. 

_This is your task: to reject sin and heresy, in yourself and in others. To guard against temptation. To honor the will of God._

James shivered, splashed water over his face again. He was trying to remember the last time he had earnestly prayed—just after Aaron disappeared, he thought. “Father, forgive me,” he murmured, “for all my failings.”

As he turned to pull himself out of the river, he spied someone sitting on the bank, and froze. He gave an irritated sigh. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Ada glanced up from her book. “You wandered off to a secluded part of the river without telling anyone what you were up to. Thought I’d make sure you weren’t going to drown yourself. If you’re planning on exiting the water now, I suppose I can turn around.”

“Did you have some grand plan to pull me out of the river if I was going to off myself?” James asked as she turned her back to him.

“Nothing so dramatic, I can’t swim that well. I was going to hit you in the back of the head before you ever got in.” Ada watched the hills as he pulled himself up on the riverbank, reaching for the towel rolled up next to his clothes. “That fire is getting closer.”

A wildfire had been burning for weeks. Ada would have liked to work to protect the entire wooded area that she owned, but all they could expend the resources to do was make sure that if the fire did reach them, it didn’t affect the town or the fields. Clearing trees, scraping the vegetation down to the dirt, so that the fire wouldn’t be able to leap across the river.

“If it takes that hill,” she said, pointing to the largest hill just upriver of the town, “I’m afraid the whole thing’ll come down at the start of the wet season. That whole side of town will be in danger, and the mine’ll be buried under God-only-knows how much that we’ll have to dig out later.”

Mostly dressed, James settled on the ground next to her. “Then if it comes to that, I suppose we’ll have to evacuate that part of town.”

“It’ll be a nightmare,” Ada muttered. She laid a hand on her middle, sighing. “Boulos tells me the little one is doing well.” She pulled a print from the pages of her book, handing it across to him. “Even almost looks like something more than a beetle’s back, now.”

It always felt a little surreal, looking at those prints, like it wasn’t quite real. Ada had stopped trying to button her vests, but she hadn’t given up on pants, just yet. “I had to tell Mrs. Randall we really didn’t need another rocking chair, but I was happy to take the cradle off her hands.” Ada shook her head, sighed. “Can’t hardly get any work done, because all anyone wants to talk to me about is our spawn.”

“You complain like you haven’t been in the best mood I’ve ever seen you in.” James handed the print back to her, and pulled his vest over his shirt.

Ada stuck her tongue out at him like they were children in the schoolyard. “Oh, like you haven’t been enjoying the congratulations of every man in town for doing the least amount of work.”

“And how much work are you getting done now?” James got to his feet and pulled Ada up after him.

“If you must know, I consider your welfare to be a top priority.” She dusted off her trousers. “Rumors are Pierce and Reyes have been in the border towns, lately. Wasn’t able to figure out why, best I can get is somebody thinks you’re hiding out in Kelchak territory.”

That was… certainly an idea. “Don’t think I’d be welcome there.” He glanced at Ada. “Does your mother know, yet?”

“God, no. I’ll tell her when the poor thing’s born.” Ada shook her head. “She’ll want to meet her grandchild.”

“Going to announce it the same way you did our wedding?”

“Personally, I don’t think that’s any of your business. Yes.” Ada looped her arm through his. “I’ve got to ask you very important question.”

James glanced at her. “About?”

“Names.” Ada’s eyes were on the column of smoke in the distance. “I thought maybe Jacob for a boy, but I haven’t settled on a middle name I like.”

“And for a girl?”

Ada was quiet for a moment. “Clara. After Rebecca’s middle name.”

“Does Jacob mean anything special to you, or—”

“No, it’s just a good name.”

James thought a little, as they walked. “Ruth,” he said. “For a girl. Clara Ruth.” 

#

The fire raged for days. They pulled pumps from the irrigation tanks and refitted them to pull water from the river and spray down the far bank, to keep back the flames. The air was choked with smoke, and Ada went nowhere without a kerchief pressed over her mouth. When she showered, soot washed out of her hair.

Anyone outside on the first day could hear when a pede was caught in the flames, the awful screaming sound coming from the woods.

Ada watched the forest burn with apprehension, not knowing if the Magdalene’s Tears would regrow during the wet season, or how long it would take for the forest to grow back. Was there any sense in even letting it grow back, when she would have to clear it when the town grew?

The new schoolhouse smelled of smoke for weeks after. The teacher was nice enough, barely into her twenties and quite shy around men—and Ada, apparently. Ada watched her once or twice, shepherding the children, a smile on her face. She was going to be a good teacher, she might even stop turning pink every time someone in shirtsleeves glanced in her direction someday.

Then there was the cattle. A modest herd, but more than enough for Carlston. About forty head, cows, heifers, steers, and a pair of bulls, fine handsome beasts, tall and muscular and the same red as the dust, dappled blue-grey to blend in with the foliage. Covenanter cattle existed nowhere else in the universe, the breeders loved to remind everyone. Fat, fast, and diabolically mean when threatened.

“Big bastards,” Ada said, the first time she was up close. “I didn’t think they’d be so tall.” The shoulder of the bigger of the two bulls was higher than the top of her head.

“Bred to outrun and outfight pedes,” the seller told her, “made sense a hundred or so years ago.”

“Still makes sense, for a place like this,” Ada muttered.

“Other breeds,” the seller was telling her, “really only good for meat or milk, not both. Covenanter cattle, though, produce plenty of both. You’ll not be wanting.”

Obnoxiously, everyone fussed over Ada’s health and how much she was working. If James was the exception, it was only because he knew better than to think he could make her stop doing anything. He didn’t have to say something for Ada to be aware of the new way he kept an eye on her, kept close at hand when he thought she might do something stupid. She tolerated it only because it was better than everyone else telling her she ought to rest more.

Her stock response became, “Dr. Boulos declared me healthy the last time I saw him, take your concerns to him.”

Ester listened to her complaints with an amused smile, arm across her middle. “You’re going to forget this all the moment you lay eyes on the baby.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I know. But you will.”

She was so busy with Carlston, with taking care of herself, she could hardly spare a thought for anything—anyone—else.

And maybe that why she was taken off guard when Hanasut came to her to tell her that Corbley was sick. “I believe that it was stress, and the smoke, that triggered his seizure,” Hanasut told her, “he was just going into molt, as well and—that is a delicate time.”

“Is he going to be alright?”

“I don’t know.” Hanasut explained to her as Ada rushed to the greenhouses that she could do more, if she had access to Kelchak medical technology, but in the state he was in, Corbley couldn’t travel, and so, all she could do was wait. Pray.

Ada threw open the door to the greenhouse, running between the rows of seedlings and potted dwarf fruit trees to the sand bed where Corbley was laying, belly down. His eyes slid open as she got to her knees next to him, but only long enough to recognize her, and then—panting—he let them close again. “What’re ya doing here?”

“I came to see you, asshole,” Ada murmured, bending to lay her hand on his head. He felt colder than he should have been.

One eye peeled open. “That anyway t’talk to somebody who’s dyin’?”

“You aren’t dying,” Ada said.

Corbley laughed softly. “You in charge’a that now?”

“You die on me now,” Ada said, “then when I die, I’m going wherever you are to punch you right in your smug face.” She stroked the still-soft scales at the crown of his head. “I can’t lose you, Corb.”

He sighed, eyes still closed. “You humans,” he muttered, “so damn needy.”

Ada stayed sat next to him as he intermittently slept and woke, more lucid sometimes than others. Once or twice he was talking in Kelchak, and Hanasut told her he was asking for his father, asking where he was. Gradually, he grew closer—her body heat, Hanasut told her—until his head was in her lap, and Ada stayed with him in the humid greenhouse, sweat dripping down her back.

James found her like that, murmuring prayers under her breath. He crouched next to her. “Miss Webb wanted me to make sure that you were okay.”

Ada stroked her fingers down the back of Corbley’s neck, making his spines shiver. “Carlston wouldn’t exist, if not for him,” she said. “I probably wouldn’t be alive.” All the times Corbley had been there for her, in his particular gruff way, seeing that things were taken care of, making sure the men did what she wanted. He had never questioned her in front of the men, only behind closed doors. He had given her so much and all he had ever asked for was a name, a job, and a place to stay.

James handed her a bottle of water, and Ada hadn’t realized how badly she needed it. He sat with her for a while, spoke to Corbley when he woke, lucid. “How are you doing?”

“Fuckin’ awful,” Corbley growled. “But she tells me I’m not allowed to die.”

James smiled. “Yeah? Pretty sure I told her something like that, once.”

“Yeah? How’d she take it?”

“Bout as well as you did,” Ada said.

Hanasut made them leave, eventually. “For his sake, and yours. Go home, eat, sleep tonight. You can come back tomorrow.”

Ada sat with Corbley every day for a week. She talked with him, poured water down his throat until he could sit up enough to drink it himself. He stayed awake longer, he warmed up, was lucid more often. Hanasut was cautious, but Ada was relieved.

Another few days, and Corbley was on his feet at least, if not back to work. “You take care of yourself,” Ada told him, “don’t go rushing back into work, yeah? I want you _healthy_ before I hear a word about you being back at work.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Corbley muttered, “remember that the next time you do somethin’ dangerous.” 

#

Ada woke because Clairy was crying. She was stiff and sore from the jostling of the train, and from sleeping up against the window. “What’s the matter?” she yawned, rubbing her face.

James glanced up. “I don’t know, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong. Just fussing, I think.”

Ada stretched and sighed, looking forward to sleeping in a real bed again. “She thinks I killed him.”

James stood to pace with Clairy against his shoulder, trying to soothe her. “Your mother doesn’t think you killed your father.”

“Yes, she does. You saw how she was.” Ada stared through her fingers out the window. Clairy had been born just before the end of the dry season. It gave her parents just enough time to arrive before the rain started, and take a room in town.

Her mother had fawned over Clairy, cooing over how she looked just like Ada had. Her father had looked at his granddaughter and only said, “Hm. Another girl.”

Ada tried to let it go, but her father was a festering splinter under her skin, and there was nothing in Carlston above his derision. Not the success of the town, not her house, not her husband, not her daughter.

She and him were out in ankle deep water and heavy rain having a ferocious argument when there was a sound like thunder, and the hillside that had been claimed by the forest fire sloughed away from the hill and down into the river. Ada had made a break for the poles where she had chained men condemned to die—her father had tried to make it to the house.

He was just gone, and with him a few houses that had been mercifully empty. Ada had come back bruised, battered, and with a mild case of pneumonia, but she had lived.

Her mother hadn’t forgiven her for that.

Ada didn’t want to be on her way to the funeral. She would have felt perfectly alright not going. The only reason she was, with James and Clairy in tow, was that it felt too cruel to her mother, to leave her totally alone burying her husband. She would go and let her mother be seen to have a daughter supporting her, a daughter who was married and a mother like she ought to be.

Ada opened the window a little, just enough to make the air in their compartment less stale. “I can smell salt on the wind,” she said, fingers on the glass. “God, I missed that smell.”

Clairy quieted down, at the sound of the wind whistling past. Ada remembered the day she had been born, on an overcast day that promised rain and gave none. It had been humid and still and the riverbed had nothing more than a dark center where moisture hadn’t yet been cooked out of the mud.

Such a tiny thing, with the thickest head of black hair Ada had ever seen on a newborn. The first time James held her, he looked almost terrified. He sat in that room and just held her, stared at her, and as Ada pulled herself out of bed with the intent of getting water, he just crumbled. Wept, as if he hadn’t in years.

It was hard to get him to put her down, now. Just starting to smile and she already had him wrapped around her little finger.

The train rounded a bend and Ada sucked in a breath. “James. James, get over here.”

“What?”

She nodded out the window. “That,” she said, “is the ocean.” Glittering and blue under the sunlight, swarms of kite lizards soaring on the updrafts, pale wings flashing. The water close to shore shimmered with fish, migrating with the turning of the season. Ada looked at Clairy, smiled. “Look, sweetheart, see the water?”

Clairy gurgled and smiled, and Ada kissed her cheek. “I have to get dressed,” she said, pulling down her bag. “Be back in a few.”

If she had to do one last kindness for her mother, then she was going to do it right. It was a miracle her mourning dress still fit her, black and high-collared, more frilled than it ought to have been. It made her look stern and severe, although the greenish light of the restroom didn’t help. “I look like someone’s spinster stewardess,” she muttered at her reflection. “Dying of the flu.”

James looked up when she came back and blinked like he’d never seen her before. “Who are you and what have you done with my wife?”

Ada gave him a scowl. “If you weren’t holding a baby, I’d throw this bag at you.”

“Hear that?” James said to Clairy. “Only just holding your head up and you’re already protecting me from your mother.”

Ada went back to the window. There hadn’t been much chatter about Reyes and Pierce lately—she imagined the church was growing embarrassed at how long it was taking, perhaps beginning to believe that James was dead. Still, it made her uneasy to be outside of Carlston. Every busy station had made her pulse spike.

“I’m going to have to go back in that house,” Ada said. “I never, ever wanted to be back in that fucking house.”

“Does it make any difference if your father isn’t there?”

Ada wasn’t sure it did. “What happened to your father?” He had told her a little, over the months. She knew his father was dead, but that was all.

“He was found in a ditch. Beat to death, according to Hannah.”

“You know the best thing about all of this?” Ada watched the waves down below. “Clairy won’t ever have to know my father. He’s just a face in a photograph to her.”

“Ada.”

“I’m sorry, I just—” She shook her head. “Spent so long wishing the bastard dead, it’s hard to believe he actually is.” 

#

Josephine first noticed the woman when she went over to call on Lillian Tailor for tea.

Lillian was a dear friend, they were only a few years apart in age, and the Tailors had been one of the few families that accepted Josephine without hesitation. Josephine visited that house often, and it wasn’t as though she kept tabs on their housewomen, but she knew the familiar faces, and she noticed the woman because she was new—and then because she looked very much like Leah. Josephine had to look a second time, just to be sure that it wasn’t her mother in a housewoman’s dress.

The woman noticed her looking, and glanced away too quickly, going back to the rug she was beating.

“Excuse me,” Josephine said, crossing to her. “My name is Josephine Finnbar, I’ve not seen you before.”

The woman looked at her extended hand in surprise, and laid down the rod she was using so that she could return the gesture. “Ruth Price,” she said, and inclined her head. “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Finnbar.”

“Forgive me if this is rude, it’s just—you look so much like my mother.” Josephine searched the woman’s face, but it never flickered. “I wondered if you have family in Janesville?”

Mrs. Price wasn’t hasty in answering. “I used to. Years ago.” Mrs. Price seemed in no hurry to say more, and Josephine was already late to see Lillian, so she thanked Mrs. Price and hurried inside, looking back over her shoulder at the door to find Mrs. Price still watching her, and again quickly looking away.

_Ruth._ That couldn’t be a coincidence. 

#

Leah’s phone pinged with a message just a few minutes after Josephine left. _Come to the Tailor house and ask the stewardess for a Mrs. Price._

Leah frowned, wondering what under Heaven could be so important that Josephine would send her that message without any context or explanation. She had yet some work to do, seeing to the investments that kept them comfortable, and only remembered Josephine’s message a few hours later, seeing a Tailor houseman on his way out to run an errand.

She sighed and started across the street, finding a young housewoman and asking if she knew where Mrs. Price was. The girl nodded and said she would fetch her, and Leah waited under a plum tree, hoping that whatever Josephine thought was important was worth the trouble—

“I’ve fetched her, Miss Finnbar.”

Leah turned and stopped cold, her eyes growing wide. Mrs. Price met her gaze levelly, holding her hands close. “Hello, Leah,” she said, very softly.

Leah tried to think of how many years it had been since she laid eyes on her eldest sister, how many years since she had thought of Ruth in anything except the past tense. “Did you tell Josephine who you were?” Leah asked.

Ruth shook her head. “She asked me if I had family in Janesville. She must have guessed.” Ruth rubbed at her hands as if they pained her. “You have a beautiful daughter.”

Leah couldn’t fathom the full depth of what she felt. “Are you busy?” she asked.

“I was making beds with one of the other women, but I don’t think anyone will resent you for my absence.”

Leah nodded, trying to make sense of what she was thinking. “How long have you been in the Settlement?”

“…Some months.”

“Why didn’t you come see me?” Leah hated how hurt she sounded. “You must have known I was right here, if not at first, then you must have seen—”

“I thought you wouldn’t want to see me.” Ruth’s mouth had a grim set to it. “You and I… were never close, and you were so angry with me, when I left—”

“I was eleven.” Leah balled up her hands at her sides. “I wanted my mother back.”

Ruth looked down.

“Come live with me,” Leah said. “You don’t need to work here, like this. Cleaning other people’s beds.”

“I couldn’t impose.”

“Ruth,” Leah said, “shut the hell up.”

A faint smile formed on Ruth’s face. “Now, that sounds more like the woman I expected you to become.”

“Go get your things and tell the stewardess you’re going to stay with your family,” Leah said. “There’s a lot I have to tell you.” 

#

It was beyond odd to be at the funeral of a man James had known for six days.

Ada sat with Clairy in her lap—she had given Clara that nickname maybe two hours after her birth at the most, and it had stuck—keeping her eyes down as the preacher spoke, avoiding the portrait of her father that stood in lieu of a casket. Mrs. Carl was sniffling and dabbing at her tears, and Ada seemed to be fighting the urge to get up and flee.

James reached over to grasp her hand, and Ada’s fingers tightened around his.

It was a brief service, and after, Ada lurked in a corner, rocking Clairy in her arms, mumbling in response to the condolences of distant cousins. “I hate this,” she whispered to James, “everyone expecting me to publicly grieve.”

“You look miserable enough to convince them, I think,” James murmured.

“I hate you, too.” Ada saw someone across the room, and turned to James. “We have to leave. Now.”

“What’s wrong?”

Ada nodded toward a man speaking to her mother. “That’s the man. The one that killed Becca. So you get me out of here before I kill him right here in this room with the first blunt object I find.”

James put a hand to her back, guiding her away. Once outside, Ada struck out with a stride and a purpose, not bothering to share whatever destination she had in mind. James followed along just behind her, supposing it was better for now not to ask what was on her mind.

She hesitated once or twice on street corners, but soon enough she would be on her way again, bouncing Clairy in the sling against her chest. “The last time I came this way,” she said, finally breaking the silence, “the only way I ever came this way, was in the dark. And now it’s been a few years and things have changed.”

“What is it you’re looking for?” James asked.

“The only place in this city that ever felt like home.” Ada hesitated in the middle of the sidewalk, and grinned. “It’s a Saturday, so with any luck—I might actually see some familiar faces. Come on, I bring all my friends here.”

They crossed the street to a door remarkable only for the fact that it was painted purple. Ada  knocked, and waited anxiously for it to open.

The woman who did open the door, dressed in fishermen’s clothes and with old scars between the lines of her face, looked at them both with a puzzled frown and said, “I think you folks have got the wrong place.”

“Moira,” Ada said, her voice cracking a little as she smiled. “Don’t you recognize me?”

The woman blinked, and her eyes grew wide. “Christ on a cracker, is that you, baby dyke?”

Ada laughed, leaning forward to put her arm around Moira in a hug. “Mind if I and the beard come in?” she asked, nodding at James.

“Jesus,” Moira said, stepping back, “come on in, I can’t believe you made an honest woman of yourself.”

The bar was dark and clean, and had the distinct air of age. It was a place that smelled of survival.  

“So who’s the fool that married you?” Moira asked, looking at James.

He gave her his name, shook her hand. “Queer as me, if you can believe it,” Ada said.

“Girl, there ain’t nobody in the universe queer as you.” Moira laughed. “And a little one! Your own, I can tell. All that hair.”

Ada tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “How come you’re here? Could practically see the fish from a mile away, I thought you’d be out on the boat. Oh, sorry—” Ada turned to James. “James, Moira’s an old friend, taught me how to find this place and put up with me being an obnoxious brat for years.”

“And for little enough reward,” Moira said. “I sold the boat,” she said to Ada, and held up her left hand, which was short two and a half fingers. “Wasn’t making enough money to justify the effort. Spend most of my days patching nets and doing maintenance work, now. Shit pay, but I guess I’ll live longer.”

It was really too early to be drinking, but the bartender had a nice face and asked him what he liked, so he took a halfway decent beer and nursed it at the bar while Ada and Moira talked.

“You still with Webb? Where is she, I’m surprised she ain’t glued to your side.”

“She’s holding everything together while I’m here.”

“Oh, hell! I didn’t even ask why you’re in town—but I guess the dress gave me a clue.”

Ada shrugged her shoulders, gave an uncomfortable laugh. “My old man finally kicked the bucket.”

“Ho-lee _shit!”_ A voice shouted from across the room. “Is that Ada Carl with a goddamn baby in her arms?”

For as quiet and uncomfortable as any interaction with her actual kin had been, Ada thrived in that bar, introducing James to people she had known before she left for Carlston, people who laughed when they heard stories about their wedding and regaled him with stories about what a pain in the ass Ada had been, claiming her place in their little world.

It was only a handful of people, but it felt like more. Ada asked about others, who she learned had moved or passed away.

It was well after dark by the time they left, Clairy having cried, nursed, slept, and cried again a few times over. They walked a few blocks away and Ada stopped to call for a driver, not wanting to walk the rest of the way home. “Becca would make fun of me,” she yawned, “I used to make it all the way home before dawn on a twisted ankle.”

James held Clairy against his chest, the warm night air making her drowsy. “You seem like you feel better.”

“I do.” Ada leaned against his side. “I’m glad Moira was there, I was afraid something would have happened to her, since I left.”

The driver came to fetch them, and when they got back to the Carl house, Mrs. Carl had already gone to bed. “This way,” Ada sighed, showing him up to her old room, where their bags were piled in a corner, and an old cradle had been brought in.

Strange, to be in the house that Ada had been a child in. It felt empty, too big, even though it was no bigger than their house in Carlston, and housed more people.

“We can’t stay long,” Ada murmured, while they laid back to back in that bed. “I don’t want Clairy in this house.” 

#

Ada allowed one week in Safe Harbor. It let her see all her old haunts, including the bay, and hear the choir at the church again. The worst thing, she decided, was that she was now considered a respectable woman. At long last, the women at church whispered, the Carl woman had outgrown her rebellion.

They wouldn’t be saying that, she thought, if they had seen her tromping around Carlston in her suit, nursing Clairy under her jacket.

It was maddening, how a ring and an infant and a dress made them think she was any different.

She was glad to leave, even if she had to contend with her mother’s teary-eyed hug and how it felt more distant than it should have. The suspicion in her mother’s eyes, in those first days as they tried to find her father’s body—as if Ada had had the chance to save his life, and withheld.

Ada couldn’t have done anything—and if she could have, she wasn’t sure she would have, which was maybe why her mother looked at her like that.

Nathan Carl was buried somewhere at the bottom of the river, and the Covenant was better for his absence.

The train left Safe Harbor, and Ada watched the window until the sea disappeared. Then she took her bag, and came back to the compartment in her suit, finally feeling like a real person again.

James had dozed off with Clairy sleeping against his chest, a spot of drool on his shirt. Ada smoothed Clairy’s hair with her fingertips. Such a little thing, to mean so much to her. To them both.

James talked sometimes about what he would like her to tell Clairy when she was older. He didn’t anticipate being around to do it himself. “You ought to just write all this down,” she told him once, and she had noticed since then a notebook that he was rarely without.

The seasons had come and gone and so far, no one had looked their way. Reason told her they would eventually, and God only knew what could happen then. The fickle little worm of hope that had found its way into her heart tried to make her believe they might not, that it might never occur to them to turn to Carlston.

Clairy was so loved—if things continued as they had been she was going to be so _spoiled_ —and Ada thought it would be nice if there was more than just Clairy, if she could grow her little family and prove that people like her could do so much more than just survive.

She was so tired of struggling just for the barest allowances.

#

It was one of Stark’s men who came tripping over his own two feet, calling, “General Pierce, Mr. Reyes, I think I found something!”

Aaron had gotten so tired of this game, of every lead that turned out to be nothing, every man who had been imprisoned or shot who didn’t look anything like James. “Another sighting?” he asked, skeptical.

“No, no, no,” the young man said, almost vibrating. He put a screen in front of them, or rather, in front of Pierce. “This pinged one of my alerts, and—it’s an obituary from Safe Harbor—”

“This is for a Nathan Carl,” Pierce said. “I’ve met Carl, just a little over a year ago.”

“Yes, but—if I may, sir—” The young soldier scrolled down to the bottom of the obituary. _“Mr. Carl is survived by his wife, Susanna, son-in-law and daughter James and Ada Finnbar, and granddaughter Clara.”_

Aaron felt as if the world had dropped out from underneath him. James couldn’t be that stupid, could he? To use the name Finnbar, after all those years—

The rest of what the soldier had said caught up to him in a rush of cold icy water. _Son-in-law and daughter, and granddaughter._ James—it had to be James, the stupid _fool_ —had a wife and a child.

“See what you can find about Mr. and Mrs. Finnbar,” Pierce said.

“Pardon me, sir, but I already did,” the soldier replied. “Mrs. Finnbar owns land in the west, a mining town, called Carlston. She’s sold ore to the church for years.”

That was frontier, barely civilization. Of course. Of course it was, there was nothing out there, the perfect place to disappear to with a new name, to remake himself. To have a _wife_ and a _child._

“There’s loads of records about her, see, but about Mr. Finnbar—nothing. No baptism records, no church documents beyond a marriage license. I can’t find anything about a James Finnbar existing before he turned up in Carlston, just under two years ago.”

“It’s him,” Aaron said, trying to still the tremble in his hands. “You know it’s him.” If that idiot had just chosen a different name—

Pierce pushed the screen away. “Tell Lieutenant Stark that we’ll be leaving for Carlston shortly. And be discreet, do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” the soldier saluted and took off.

“That idiot!” Aaron exploded, throwing a book halfway across the room. Two years, two years James had evaded them and he could have kept it up if he had used any different name.

Pierce wasn’t looking at him. “You’d do well to control yourself, Mr. Reyes.”

“Don’t talk to me about control,” Aaron sneered. It had been too easy to put Pierce back in his pocket, to draw him back in with a sly brush against his shoulder, a shared drink late at night. Pierce with his whispered justifications about how badly he needed this, praising Aaron, flattering him; Aaron flew between smug enjoyment and contempt in equal shares. _Control._ Pierce didn’t know a goddamn thing about control, only suppression.

“Stark will not understand.”

“I don’t give a fuck about Stark,” Aaron said. He had started to get used to the idea that they wouldn’t find James, that wherever he had disappeared to, he had gone for good. Or at least, until the desire to change the way of things took him again, and he was stupid enough to reveal himself and try to regain his movement.

His thoughts kept coming back to the wife. What, had—had James manipulated some poor woman into marrying him? So he could truly give up everything they had ever bled for and have a ‘normal’ life? With a cute little house and a wife and a baby? God in Heaven.

“He will think you wanted Metzger to get away.”

“Can you look me in the eye and tell me that’s not what you wanted?” Aaron asked.

Pierce let out a slow breath. “You brought me into this by telling me you thought I was the one person who could talk him into repenting. Later, I believed you wanted him dead. Now, I can’t tell what it is you want.”

Aaron wanted the last twenty years of his life back. He wanted the life he had been promised, the status that his name alone should have bought him. He wanted his peace of mind.

He wanted James Metzger to look him in the face and tell Aaron that he hated him.


	19. Sanctuary

Samuel knew Reyes was angry with him, for going to Safe Harbor first.

“Mrs. Carl will undoubtedly have a portrait from her only daughter’s wedding. Even if she doesn’t, she’ll be able to describe her new son-in-law.”

“This is a delay,” Reyes hissed, quiet so that Stark wouldn’t hear him. “You’re putting off the inevitable, and I’m the one who will catch hell for it.”

Reyes had refused to see him alone, since Samuel had made the decision. Stark had been no more bearable—this was the first real lead they had had since they began, and he wanted to finish the damn thing, to make his career on Metzger’s capture.

Samuel thought that Stark would do well, to learn a little fear.

The last time he had seen John Metzger face to face was just a few months before Reyes betrayed him.

Metzger had been captured, and perhaps a shrewder man would have killed him then. Samuel had had the idea that they would take him back to the Settlement, let the church take care of it and put a proper end to things.

He remembered looking at Metzger then and thinking of the years he had already spent chasing the man, trying to stop him, trying to blot out his heresy, him and Reyes always half a step ahead, slipping out from between his fingers like so much smoke. Now to have him, to be just feet away from him, to have the power of life and death over him—Samuel hadn’t quite known what to do with that.

“Why don’t you just kill me?”

That was the first thing Metzger said to him, when Samuel went to see him. “Whatever you’re planning to do to me, it isn’t going to be worth it.”

“You can still repent,” Samuel told him. “There is always forgiveness.” That was what he was supposed to say. Repentance was powerful, but it didn’t necessarily mean he wouldn’t be killed. It only meant he wouldn’t be a martyr.

Metzger had laughed, shook his head. “My repentance is between me and God.”

“That won’t save your life.” It would be easier to ask for mercy on his behalf, if he repented. Samuel was going to lose something, if Metzger died. That was the feeling nested deep in his gut that he couldn’t quite explain. He had made his life chasing this man, and it was in evading him that Metzger’s name, his ideas, had spread across the Covenant. They were intertwined, in ways Samuel neither trusted nor entirely understood.

The look in Metzger’s eyes, as if he knew something Samuel didn’t. The smile of grim acceptance. “Repenting to the church won’t save my soul. Kill me, and get it over with.”

Metzger was in chains, in the middle of a camp of Bishop’s Men, there was no reason to think that Reyes would be mad enough to lead a rescue mission, or that he would succeed.

It was chaos, and Samuel would have been hard pressed to give details. There was an explosion, then a series of explosions, and it was like Metzger had been waiting for it, because he took advantage of Samuel turning his back, throwing chains around his neck and half strangling him, using Samuel as a shield. “Thought you wanted to die,” Samuel snarled as Metzger pushed him out into the corridor, looking for his men.

“I try not to question the will of God.”

The holes in Samuel’s memory frustrated him to no end. The result of trauma to the brain, doctors told him. He remembered seeing his men gunned down as they scrambled for their weapons. He remembered Metzger’s heretics, ragtag band that they were, he didn’t remember how they had gotten inside the camp, or why there were so few of his own soldiers.

Metzger had meant to use him as a hostage, of that he was fairly certain. A general was no small bargaining chip.

The explosions Reyes orchestrated had compromised what was already a destabilized building. The wall collapsed, and given the choice between holding onto his hostage and saving his own life, Metzger chose the latter. Samuel didn’t remember much of the collapse, but he remembered being on his back, half-buried with his arm pinned and pain that seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once.

Metzger was trying to dig him out.

Reyes grabbed Metzger’s shoulder. “Leave him!”

“We need him,” Metzger said.

“Won’t do us a damn bit of good if you’re dead. Put him out of his misery and _go!”_

Metzger met his gaze, took the pistol Reyes offered him. Samuel was half delirious with pain, but he remembered feeling the cold metal of the barrel against his temple and thinking that at least he was going to die quickly. Then it was gone, and Metzger was leaving him, leaping into the back of a stolen truck with Reyes, escaping before the Bishop’s Men had the chance to regroup.

Samuel woke up days later in a hospital, without his arm. He had no idea, still, why Metzger hadn’t killed him.

Mrs. Carl was a small woman, frail-seeming as she allowed them into her home. Her mourning black seemed to overflow her, to drag her down into the chair in her parlor. “You came to ask about Mr. Finnbar? Has he done something?”

Reyes scoffed, sulking by the window.

“We suspect that he may not be who he says he is,” Samuel told her, as gently as he could. “He may have information pertaining to John Metzger’s whereabouts. Do you happen to have a photograph of your son-in-law? Mr. Reyes here may be able to identify him.”

“Yes, just a moment.” Mrs. Carl fumbled with her phone, sniffling as she did so. “I don’t have a formal wedding portrait,” she said, “but my daughter sent this to me after their wedding. It was—quite sudden, you know, I didn’t even know she was engaged.” She handed the phone over to Reyes, and Samuel watched as his face hardened, nostrils flaring.

“It’s him,” Reyes said, showing the image to Samuel. “Now can we do what we have to do?”

It was almost jarring, to see Metzger that well dressed, and with a woman on his arm. He wasn’t looking at the camera, but it was him, Samuel would have bet his remaining limbs on it.

“I’m sorry, but who is he?” Mrs. Carl asked, sounding alarmed. “Who married my daughter?”

“It’s nothing to worry about, Mrs. Carl,” Samuel told her, “your daughter is perfectly safe.” He had asked Reyes about that. _No, she’ll be fine. Beyond fine. She’s the mother of his child, James would never let someone that important to him get hurt._ “You’ve been a great help to us,” Samuel told her, taking her hand. “We’ll be on our way to Carlston very soon. Please, do not tell anyone that we’ve been to see you. It may create a difficult situation.”

“O-of course,” she murmured, seeming not at all reassured. “General, my daughter—my granddaughter—”

“Will be perfectly fine. We only need Mr. Finnbar to come with us to the Settlement, that is all.”

“This was a pointless exercise,” Reyes snapped as they got back into Samuel’s car. “We’ve wasted time and frightened a woman all to confirm what we already knew.”

Samuel looked at him. “Are you upset because I upset an old woman, or because you had to see Metzger with his wife?”

The moment’s hesitation and the cold flash of hate across Reyes’ face gave him enough of an answer. “Go to Hell.”

Samuel closed his eyes. “I surely am.”

#

The evening was warm and buzzing with insects. Ada sat on the porch working out the budget for the next few months, her glass of ice water sweating a puddle on the corner of the table. It was the kind of tedious work that demanded enough of her attention she couldn’t worry about anything else. Ester came out with a drink, leaning in the door frame.

“Where’s Clairy?” Ada asked, rubbing at her eyes. Numbers swam behind her eyelids, and she was starting to get a headache.

“Where do you think?” Ester asked. “He’ll bring her out in a moment, she’s probably hungry.”

“She’ll just be up again in the middle of the night,” Ada yawned. “Someday I’ll get to sleep through the night again.”

James appeared with Clairy sitting in the crook of his arm, her little hand clinging to his shirt. She was babbling softly, spied Ada, and smiled throwing her weight back to reach for Ada. Ada laughed, lifting Clairy into her lap. “Hello, sweetheart, have you been talking everybody’s ear off?”

Clairy gurgled and batted her hand at Ada’s face.

“She’s decided she likes Micah’s hair and wants to tear it out of his head,” James said, leaning against the porch rail.

“Oh, dear,” Ada said, shaking her head solemnly. “That won’t do, that won’t do at all! You do that to Momma at three in the morning and we’ll have to have a talk.” She kissed Clairy’s cheeks and smiled.

Micah opened the door with the phone in his hand. “Mrs. Finnbar,” he said, “it’s your mother.”

Ada frowned, reaching for the phone. It was awfully late for her mother to be calling, and when she looked at the display, it wasn’t from her mother’s phone. “Hello?”

“Ada, I have to ask you something, and I want you to tell the truth.” Her mother sounded like it was a matter of life and death.

“Mother?” Ada adjusted Clairy in her lap, uneasy.

“Do you know that your husband is not who he says he is?”

Ada looked at James, her heart leaping into her throat. James picked up on her alarm, and tensed. “Who’s been talking to you?”

“Do you _know?”_

“Yes, Mother, I know.” Ada pulled Clairy a little closer.

“Who is he?” her mother asked, shrill. “Ada, who are you married to?”

“I’m not going to tell you that. Mother, who has been talking to you?”

“General Pierce and Aaron Reyes came to see me today.”

Ada felt as if a stone had been dropped into her stomach. Her mother was almost hysterical. “They told me not to tell anyone they’d been by, but it just didn’t feel right, and I was worried you weren’t safe—are you safe?”

“Yes, I’m safe,” Ada said, standing. She passed Clairy into Ester’s arms, pacing along the porch. “What did they want when they came to see you?”

“They wanted to see a picture of your husband, said that he might know where Metzger is. All Mr. Reyes said was ‘it’s him.’ Ada, who _is_ he?”

Ada thought she was going to be sick. “Momma,” she said, very softly. It was the first time she had called her mother that since she was a little girl. “You don’t want to know.”

“Well I’m going to find out, aren’t I?” Her mother sounded like she was crying. “Is he a heretic? Am I going to find out when they find John Metzger, or before?”

Ada forced a breath into her lungs. She turned around, and looked at James again. “Mother, that’s who they’re going to find when they come here.”

Her mother’s silence felt like the bottom of the ocean. “Ada,” she breathed. “Ada, you don’t mean—”

“Remember this,” Ada snapped, “when you’ve made an orphan of my daughter.” Ada ended the call and felt herself start to tremble.

“They know,” James said, “don’t they?”

Ada swallowed past the lump in her throat. “It seems,” she said, “that Pierce and Reyes were in Safe Harbor today, to see my mother.”

A heavy quiet hung over all of them, and Clairy started to cry. Ada went forward to take her, going inside, trying to make sense of the storm in her mind.

“Tomorrow,” she said, when James followed her in, “you and I are paying a visit to Pastor Richards.”

“Ada—”

“I will not take this lying down.” She looked up at him. “I am not going to look Clairy in the face and tell her that the reason she doesn’t have a father is because I did _nothing.”_ Ada shook her head, bouncing Clairy in her arms. “Richards will grant you sanctuary, because I won’t give him any other choice.”

#

Jeremiah Richards felt he had done respectably well in Carlston, considering all the obstacles he had faced. If he had failed in regards to Mrs. Finnbar, well, he could not be held accountable for her actions. She seemed—happy, at least. He had no evidence that she was being mistreated.

Jeremiah would have hoped, at least, that the prospect that her daughter would someday be baptized into the church would have spurred her to provide funds for a church building, but so far he had been unable to get an answer from her on that matter. He had performed the initial baptism in the Finnbar house, while a day old Clara Ruth had slept through the entire ceremony.

He had thought a great deal about what he wanted in a church, a building that reflected the success of Carlston itself. It ought to be near the river, he thought, with great windows to let in the light. A place that the whole city could find refuge in.

Jeremiah was interrupted from these thoughts by someone banging on the door. “Just a moment!” he called, abandoning his tea on the kitchen counter.

Mrs. Finnbar looked like she had not slept at all, but she smiled when answered the door. “Pastor Richards,” she said, “may we come in? I have to ask a very urgent favor of you.”

Mr. Finnbar hung back a little, seeming reluctant, and every bit as sleepless as his wife.

“Of course,” he said, startled. Neither of them ever came out of their way to call on him. “Can I get you anything? I’ve just made a pot of tea.”

“No, thank you, Pastor, we shouldn’t be long.” The pair of them kept glancing at each other, and Jeremiah had the distinct feeling that he was witnessing a silent argument.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, bringing them to the sitting room.

Another glance between them, and Mrs. Finnbar let out a breath. “I need you to grant my husband sanctuary.”

Jeremiah blinked. “Sanctuary? For what reason?” Heresy. He knew it with a conviction, deep in his gut. The sort of folk that man surrounded himself with, his distinct discomfort with church services—it had to be heresy. He was one of Metzger’s heretics and finally the law had caught up to him.

Mrs. Finnbar looked to her husband. “Sanctuary can’t be granted under false pretenses,” she whispered.

“My name isn’t James Finnbar,” Mr. Finnbar said with a sigh. “It’s John James Metzger.”

Jeremiah stared at him, a slow sense of horror creeping through his veins. The stories he had heard, of holy men tortured and burned in their churches, of the perversions that ran rampant among his heretics, from the man himself—“You—you,”

“Pastor,” Mrs. Finnbar said, “I need you to grant him sanctuary.”

Jeremiah looked at her. She had known. Maybe not when she married him, but she had known, and said nothing. “I can’t do that!” he cried.

“You can,” she said, her voice crystallizing in the air, eyes burning, “and you will.”

“I cannot in good faith—”

“How old is Noah, now?” Mrs. Finnbar asked, any pretense at soft warmth dropping away. “Nine? Ten? Getting old enough to understand what it means that the man he thinks is his father, isn’t.”

Jeremiah felt cold. “Mrs. Finnbar,” he said, “please.”

“It’s Philip Hayashi’s wife, isn’t it, who’s his mother? Goodness, Pastor, they’ve been married for fifteen years.”

“Ada,” Mr. Finnbar said quietly.

“No,” Mrs. Finnbar replied, “if he means to make an orphan of my child, I’ll happily make a bastard of his.” She stared him down, as he had seen her do to men a hair’s breadth away from a shallow grave. “Grant him sanctuary, or I will drag you through Hell.”

Jeremiah summoned up his courage. “Mrs. Finnbar, this is far greater than just the three of us.” People had died for Metzger’s heresy, good Christian people. The peace and sanctity of the Covenant had been thrown into upheaval, and might never be entirely repaired.

The calculating stare she gave him frightened Jeremiah more than anything he had ever seen her do. “The last man who was a threat to me died in the woods last spring,” she said, “in a pede-hunting accident. I wonder what might happen to the man who threatens those I hold dear.”

Jeremiah’s voice shook. “You cannot threaten a man of the cloth—”

“How many men have you held funeral rites over since you came here, Pastor?” Mrs. Finnbar asked. “Men whose eyes I looked into as I squeezed the trigger. How many of those men personally wronged me?” Unexpectedly, unsettlingly, her voice softened. “Please, Pastor. For whatever affection you once held for me.”

He shouldn’t. He ought to let God’s judgment come for this man, and damn him to Hell for everything he had done. Most of all, he ought not fall for that soft note in Mrs. Finnbar’s voice, because he knew it to be false, but he couldn’t bear the thought of her hating him, and if he was the reason she became a widow—

Jeremiah turned away, going to his files. He would be despised for this, the man who knowingly granted sanctuary to John Metzger. People would curse his name and spit at him in the street.

But Noah would be safe, and Mrs. Finnbar—Mrs. Metzger, he thought with a twist in his gut—wouldn’t find a way to dispose of him in the river.

There was a paper, for such things, and then he would have to enter the file into a database. Without a doubt, that would draw the eye of the church upon them all. Jeremiah willed his hand to be steady, writing in the name John James Metzger, dating and signing the allowance of sanctuary, and sliding the paper across the low table to him.

Metzger signed it with no joy, and there was only the barest sign of relief on Mrs. Metzger’s face. She watched as he went to the computer he used only for church matters, entering the appropriate files.

Jeremiah sighed. “It’s done. And damn you both for it.”

“Thank you, Pastor.” Mrs. Metzger held her arms close across her chest. “I won’t forget this.”

No, of course not. No debt was ever forgotten in Carlston.

After a quiet moment, Metzger said, “I am sorry for having put you in this position, Pastor.”

They left, and Jeremiah watched them leave, wondering if God could forgive him for what he had done.

#

Micah watched James from the door of the nursery. James sat playing a soft tune on his guitar, singing a lullaby, rocking Clairy’s cradle with the toe of his shoe.

Everything in the house had felt different, since Mrs. Finnbar’s mother called. James had hardly spoken, except when he argued with Mrs. Finnbar over what they should or shouldn’t do. They did that a lot, now, voices rising throughout the house until one of them stormed out, or Miss Webb intervened.

It was the waiting that was excruciating. Every moment felt filled at once with a sense of urgency and a need to carry on as always because life wouldn’t wait for them. There were things that had to be done, and yet none of them felt like they mattered. The shadow of what was coming loomed over all of them, and the only one permitted total ignorance of what was going on was Clairy.

“Mr. Deering.”

Mrs. Finnbar stood at the top of the steps, watching him. “May I speak to you for a moment?”

Outside of asking him to do things, she never spoke much to Micah. He had the impression that she liked him, trusted him enough to keep an eye on her daughter, but they weren’t friends, not the way she was with James. Mrs. Finnbar had other things to attend to, that was why she had a steward to look after her house.

Micah went to the stair rail, nodding his head. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”

Mrs. Finnbar grimaced. “You know I’m doing everything I can for him, don’t you?”

Micah nodded. “I do.” It would have been hard to accuse her of not spending every waking moment trying to plan, to figure out what could be done in advance.

“Will you stay, if something happens to him?” She looked tired, sad. “You’re very good with Clairy, and if… I would like you to stay. But the choice is yours.”

Micah glanced back at the nursery. “I don’t know where I’d go.” He had nowhere that wasn’t Carlston, and no opportunities except to return to the brothel.

Mrs. Finnbar was quiet for a moment, watching James. “I know why he cares so much about you,” she said. “I don’t think anyone, knowing you, would wonder at that. But I’ve never asked you what you like about him.”

Micah felt something tighten in his chest. “At first, I just thought he was sweet. A little odd, maybe, but sweet. He wasn’t just someone who came to the brothel to fulfill a need and go about his day, or at least, he didn’t make me feel that way.” Micah bit his lip. “I thought, this is someone I could genuinely like… and then I thought, this is someone who trusts me enough to tell me something that could get him killed. And no one’s ever trusted me like that.”

Mrs. Finnbar gazed at him for a moment, and then she nodded. “I don’t know if he’s said it to you,” she said, “but anyone looking at the two of you from the outside could tell you he loves you.”

He had said it. The night Mrs. Finnbar got that call from her mother, he said it, whispered it against Micah’s throat like a prayer, like an apology.

“Please don’t let anything happen to him,” Micah whispered.

Mrs. Finnbar smiled bitterly. “I’m trying.”

#

Pierce wanted information on the Carl woman, and though Aaron resented further delay, he couldn’t deny that Ada Carl was an unknown entity. If she didn’t know who James was, that might be enough to get her help. If she did, then they needed to know how to handle her.

Somehow, James had convinced a pastor to grant him sanctuary. As long as he followed the rules, he was as good as untouchable.

Mallory was a quiet little town, it had at least been around long enough to make something of itself. Aaron hadn’t the slightest notion what to expect from Carlston, he had never been this far west.

Hansen didn’t seem pleased to see them in the least, until Pierce told him they were investigating the Finnbars for connections to Metzger. “Ha, finally someone’s come after that woman,” the old man said. “King Carl’s crown falls away.”

There was no love lost between the two landowners, evidently. Hansen filled their ears with stories about the woman who dressed in men’s clothes, consorted with Kelchak, and executed criminals with her own pistol. “I’ve suspected her of heresy for years,” Hansen said, waving his cigarette through the air. “Wouldn’t surprise me at all that she’s dragged in some heretic to be her husband.”

“What do you know about Mr. Finnbar?” Pierce pressed, and there Hansen had to admit that he didn’t know much.

“I’ve never met the man. I try not to encourage visits from the woman, so I’ve not had occasion to be introduced. As far as I know, he turned up one day and she made him sheriff. Only law enforcement she has. Either way, I wouldn’t trust any man that married her. At best, he’s a fool.”

It had already been late, when they arrived, and Hansen was eager to host them, inviting them to dinner and to stay in his house. Aaron was ready to disappear into the town and seek any distraction when a woman put her hands on his shoulders and whispered, “Why, hello, little brother.”

“Hello, Joanna,” Aaron sighed.

Joanna smirked, sitting down next to him at the table. “How is our mother?”

“She thinks I ought to get married,” Aaron said, accepting a glass of wine from a houseman.

“I’m already praying for your wife,” Joanna said, smiling. “It’s too late to marry you to someone who could have bullied you into being a halfway decent husband.”

“Speaking of, how is your marriage?” He disliked David Hansen. Found him dull and conservative.

Joanna laughed. “Quite fine. I have to admit, I’m growing bored of Mallory, I’ll be happy to be back in the Settlement.”

“And your children?”

“Tell me I’m too young to be a grandmother.” Joanna shook her head. “Margaret’s expecting her first. I’m hoping Luke will marry soon, but he’s stubborn like his father.” She looked at him over her wine glass, smiled. “Rumor has it the man Ada Carl pulled out of thin air might be someone more important than that.”

“You know I can’t tell you about that.” He looked down the table at Pierce, speaking to Hansen. “No one should have been telling you about that.”

“The Hansens only keep secrets from outsiders,” Joanna murmured, “terrible gossips within the family. Not like our family at all.” She eyed him. “They have a baby girl, you know.”

“Yes. I know.” And if he knew James at all, James was an adoring father, would raise Heaven and Hell for his child.

Might even go to war for her.

“Have you met Mrs. Finnbar?”

“Once. Years ago.” Joanna waved a hand in the air. “My father-in-law considers her a dangerous influence on all other women, and she loathes him, so we haven’t had much occasion to socialize, but I did speak to her once.”

“What did you make of her?” Hansen hated her, fine, but that didn’t mean anything. Ada Finnbar had run a frontier mining town from the time she was barely twenty years old, and from what Aaron had gleaned, she had run it with clearly defined rules and inflexible consequences. Hansen called her ‘King Carl,’ and Aaron didn’t like the sound of that at all.

“If she were a man, she’d make a fine husband for an adventurous young woman.” Joanna shrugged. “Can’t say I ever thought she’d find a man that would marry her, but then again… maybe it’s that same quality he likes.”

“Joanna,” Aaron said.

“Well, she’s a hard woman, Aaron. Hard land makes hard people.” Joanna was aging much like their mother, more intimidating the older she got. “What is it that you want to know about her, Aaron?”

“How fiercely is she going to defend her husband?”

Joanna considered the question, gazing into her wine glass. “From our brief encounter,” she said, “and from what I otherwise know of the woman… I would expect she would defend her own by whatever means she determines necessary.”

#

Samuel was folding his uniform when Reyes tapped on his door. The Hansen house was quiet, most people had gone to bed. Reyes leaned in the door frame, hands in his pockets. “May I come in?”

Samuel stepped back, if for no other reason than he didn’t want Reyes lingering in the hall. “You haven’t let me near you since I made the decision to go to Safe Harbor.”

He would never admit it, but he had missed Reyes. He had grown reluctantly fond of the wry twist to Reyes’ mouth, the rare moments when he was quiet and didn’t feel the need to say anything.

Reyes stood just inside the door, looking around at the borrowed room, how barren it was. “This isn’t forgiveness,” he said, “or peacemaking.”

“Should I ask what it is?”

Reyes looked at him, and Samuel knew old bitterness when he saw it. “Tomorrow we go out to Carlston, and I see James for the first time since I deserted him.” Reyes stepped toward Samuel, each word slow and measured. “He has a wife now. A pretty little life with a pretty little family.” He put fingertips to Samuel’s chest, tilted his face up as if he was about to kiss him. “I intend to meet him freshly fucked, and smelling of your cologne.”

#

Ada was on the porch in the rocking chair with Clairy when she saw the dust in the distance. She watched the cars approach, tension running through her body. What was it she had said to James, that day when they trooped off into the woods? _Someday civilization and the church will come to Carlston._ This wasn’t quite how she had envisioned it.

“That’s them, isn’t it?” James said from the door.

“Take Clairy inside,” Ada said. “They should know you have sanctuary by now, but… I’d rather not give them the opportunity to claim ignorance.” She wouldn’t put it above any Bishop’s Man to shoot James on sight, and pretend as if he hadn’t known. It’s what she would have done.

The cars drew closer, and they evidently knew where they would find the landowner, because they came directly to her house. Ada stood at the top of the steps, hands on her hips. “Can I help you gentlemen?” she called as the first men began to get out of their cars. Mostly the blue uniforms of Bishop’s Men, but there, a wine-red jacket, and a head of dark curls.

 _James has a type,_ Ada thought, her mouth twisting into a frown.

The man in a general’s uniform stepped forward. His left sleeve folded up at the elbow and the cuff pinned to the shoulder. “Are you Ada Finnbar?”

“I am.” She gazed at him. “And you, I’d guess, are General Pierce.”

“I’d like to speak to your husband.”

People had come out into the street to see who had come into town, and watched from a distance. Gossip in the town would be out of control in a matter of hours.

Ada folded her arms across her chest. “For what purpose?”

Reyes snorted and shook his head, muttering something Ada couldn’t hear.

“You will speak to no one in my house until I know why you are here.” Ada tried to calm the hammering of her heart. People didn’t challenge Bishop’s Men, it went against everything they were taught as children. Bishop’s Men enforced the law of God, and to question them was to question the church.

“You know exactly why,” Reyes said, his voice full of scorn. “Don’t you, Mrs. Metzger?”

Ada dug her fingernails into her arm. “You’re aware, of course,” she said, “that he was granted sanctuary?”

“And we intend to honor that,” Pierce said, “but having come all this way, it would help us to know that he is here, as the terms of his sanctuary would dictate.” Because if James left Carlston, he was as good as dead. Sanctuary only protected a person within the district of the pastor who granted it. To leave was to violate the terms, and lose the right of protection.

Ada heard the door open behind her, and glanced over her shoulder as James stepped to her side. He put his arm around Ada’s shoulders, pulling her against his side, and she watched Reyes bristle like a feral dog threatened. “Afternoon, gentlemen,” James said, nodding to them.

“Since you’ve come such a long way,” Ada said, “I’d invite you to take rooms in town. But I see no reason you need to stay overly long.” They would linger just to make their presence felt, to put pressure and wait for James to do something that would violate the terms of sanctuary.

Then, they could do whatever they wanted.

“We will discuss the duration of our stay later,” General Pierce said, “perhaps over dinner.”

Ada was not letting any of those men into her house. She was not the one they had come for, she was under no obligation to do anything more than feed them and grant them a place to stay—and it was not going to be in her house. “I will meet you in Perkins’ Tavern at seven, to discuss whatever it is you want to discuss.” Ada nodded at him. “I hope you like frontier food, General.” She hoped it turned his stomach and left him sick.

She watched them drive away, James’ arm still around her shoulders, and she said, “Pull a stunt like that again without warning me and I’ll chop your goddamn hand off.”

James laughed softly, dropping his arm to his side. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

“Will you do one thing for me?” Ada asked.

“What’s that?”

“Stay home, and don’t fucking talk to anyone.”


	20. Through the Valley

It was loneliness that took Miriam to the Finnbar house. She hadn’t seen Samuel in months, and he answered her messages in a less and less timely fashion. She knew without asking why that was.

Miriam hadn’t called on Leah Finnbar in years, and she worried as her driver reached the gates that she was imposing, but on the phone Leah had sounded so pleased when she asked if she could come by. “I was just thinking about you! Do you still take your tea without sugar?”

For a moment it had put her back in that country house where Josephine had been born, when Leah brought her tea every afternoon, with cream but no sugar. “It’s too sweet,” she told Leah, then.

Leah had only laughed and said, “Imagine being so used to having sweetness that you can say no to it.”

Her driver opened her door for her, and a houseman showed her inside. Since the last time she had been within its walls, the Finnbar house had changed little. It still spoke to her of a simple satisfaction—beautiful without being grandiose or intimidating. It was a house that welcomed visitors.

“Miriam!” Leah emerged from a corridor, smiling. “It’s so good to see you again.” She greeted Miriam with a hug, and for a moment that friendly intimacy was almost too much to bear—Miriam had grown too comfortable with her loneliness. “How have you been?”

How had she been. Not how was her husband, her children. How had she been. Miriam tried to remember the last time someone had asked her that. “I’ve—” Miriam hesitated, and Leah sensed it.

“Come up to the library,” she said, taking Miriam’s hand as if they were still girls, and not women who had both raised children of their own. “Jo is out with my sister, and Momma is resting, so we’ll have all the time in the world to talk.”

“Your sister is here?” Miriam asked. She hadn’t thought that Leah was in contact with any of her sisters.

“Yes! You’ll have to meet her. But I want to hear about you.” Leah looked at her with such honest concern, squeezing her hand. “The war isn’t over for either of us, is it?”

Miriam let out a soft laugh. “How did you know?”

“I’ve been watching that same line of worry in Jo’s face for years, you think I can’t recognize it in yours?” Leah smiled at her, and Miriam felt a flood of relief.

She had come to the right place.

#

Seeing Aaron again had shaken something in James, woken demons that he thought he had put down. The last time he saw Aaron, there had been a gun pressed to the back of his head. He had felt the tremble in Aaron’s hand through the barrel. “All this God-damned fighting, and for what? What the fuck have we gotten for it?”

He had talked Aaron down, or thought he had. For once, it hadn’t come to blows. The last year and a half of the war had been… bad. James couldn’t have said who began most of those fights.

He knew perfectly well who had finished them. Aaron wasn’t a fighter, never had been. Not the way James was.

James had feared that when he saw Aaron again his resolve would crumble, that the years before would overpower whatever betrayals had passed between them. That wasn’t it, though. He saw Aaron’s face, saw him standing at Pierce’s side as if he belonged there, and what he thought about wasn’t the good years, or how much he had once been willing to sacrifice for Aaron.

Instead, he thought of a man named Stevenson. They had barely known each other, though Stevenson said he had been with the heretics since the early days. After Aaron betrayed them, when the Bishop’s Men came bringing hell-fury down on them, it was Stevenson that drove the truck James escaped in.

He spoke so cheerfully, when they were away and into the night, watchful for any lights before or behind them, that it wasn’t until he started to grow quiet that James realized he had been shot, and had been bleeding out. “Figured at least one of us could get a running chance,” Stevenson said, when James made him stop. “It’s over for me, but not for you. Just leave me here, there’s no reason anybody needs to assume I wasn’t alone.”

Of everything he had done during the war, every sin he had ever committed, it was leaving Stevenson to die alone that haunted him the most. He had a family, he told James, up in the north. He had meant to go back for them, when the war was over. Stevenson wasn’t his real name, though, so James shouldn’t bother to look for them. “They’ll know, when I don’t come home.”

The man was dead and the only person who had been with him when he was dying had walked away.

That was what weighed on his heart when he saw Aaron.

“You can’t honestly expect me not to talk to him,” he told Ada.

Ada pulled on a crisp new vest, emerald green with brass buttons. “And why the hell not?” she asked. “Or am I supposed to have forgotten the time that you implied you would kill him if you ever saw him again?”

“We have unfinished business.”

“Is that supposed to convince me you aren’t going to try to murder him?” Ada glanced at the clock, made for her wardrobe to find her best jacket. “Because I would remind you that I am working very hard to keep you alive.”

“Ada, I need to talk to him. Just talk.” When she didn’t answer, James said, “I have to ask him why.”

That gave her pause, at least. Ada sighed, running a hand down her face. “Hanasut is coming with us,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because I was afraid you would talk me into this and she’s the one person I know for sure can knock you down if I need her to.” Ada straightened her collar and glanced at him. “Go put on something that Clairy hasn’t vomited on recently. And if there is a breath of trouble, James, I swear to Christ—”

“I understand.” He wasn’t going to throw away this momentary salvation. Not for Aaron, and not for Samuel Pierce.

Hanasut and Corbley both waited on the porch. “Ya think I was gonna just sit back and miss the show?” Corbley asked, cuffing Ada lightly on the shoulder. He stood nearly a full foot taller than her now, only just shorter than James, with blue-green spines eight inches long at the crown of his head.  He and Hanasut together made an intimidating pair, which James supposed Ada was well aware of.

“Be on your best behavior,” Ada warned him. “All of you.”

The tavern had set aside a room for them, at Ada’s request. A neat little table, a fresh cloth. “As long as I can,” Ada had muttered earlier that day, “I’ll hold these bastards at arm’s length.”

Pierce, when he arrived, gave James a long look. “Mr. Metzger.”

“General.” Strange, to see him again. James had spent so much time thinking about Aaron, about what he might do or say, that he hadn’t spared a thought at all for Pierce.

Well—that wasn’t entirely true. He had thought of Pierce a great deal, from the last time he saw him. James remembered being strangely relieved to learn that he had survived their last encounter. As many fights as they had fought, as many battles as they had waged against each other, it was as if neither of them was ever quite satisfied with the results. A defeat had to be avenged. A victory was never quite really a victory.

Aaron had fiercely resented it; he once said that he wouldn’t come to bed until he was certain that Pierce wasn’t lying between them.

When had that began, and why? For as much thought as he had given Pierce over the years, he had never quite found an answer for that.

An officer James didn’t recognize was introduced as Lieutenant Stark, and James had the sense of being looked at as a dangerous animal. The look Stark gave Ada was full of a particular kind of disgust, and Ada made no effort whatsoever to appear at all interested in him or his opinion. Her eyes settled instead beyond Stark, to the person James had been avoiding looking directly at.

It had only been a little over two years, and yet James felt as if Aaron had aged. There were lines around his eyes that hadn’t used to be there, a weariness in his expression that he had always concealed before.

Aaron slid past him rather more closely than the space required, close enough for James to catch that he smelled different. As much time as they had spent together, James supposed there were few things more familiar to him than the smell of Aaron’s skin, and this cologne was different, not something that Aaron ever would have chosen to wear.

Aaron gave a curt nod to Ada, calling her ‘Mrs. Metzger.’ Ada smiled thinly and turned away, but James was still watching when Aaron laid a hand on Pierce’s shoulder, muttered something in his ear.

When had that happened?

Ada looked at him, and loud enough that Aaron could hear, said, “James, love, sit down.”

Aaron’s eyes darted sharply to James. James put a hand on the back of Ada’s neck and kissed the top of her head before he took the seat next to her, turning an impassive expression to Aaron.

“Do you fear trouble, Mrs.—ah,” Pierce said, starting to nod at Corbley and Hanasut, who had taken up positions on either side of Ada and James.

“You may call me by whichever name you wish, General, it makes no difference to me.” Ada nodded at Pierce, “You mistake me, Mr. Corbley and Ms. Hanasut are not my bodyguards, they are trusted advisors.”

A dinner had already been prepared, not humble but not of any especial effort, either. James wondered if Ada had neglected to tell Mrs. Perkins who would be eating it. Aaron settled at the opposite corner of the table from James, giving Ada a cold eye. “Do you find yourself in need of counsel, Mrs. Metzger?”

Ada opened a bottle of wine, and filled James’ glass before her own. He had an idle thought about what an excellent actress she would have made, in another life. “Perhaps if we all sought a little more counsel, a great deal of trouble could be avoided.”

“I must say,” Pierce said, “it’s impressive how much you’ve made of this town in just a few years, and starting so young.”

“I thank God every day,” Ada said mildly, passing the bottle along. “Were it not for His will, this place would have perished before it ever lived.”

“Was it by His will that you found your husband?” Aaron asked, inspecting the wine with skepticism.

Ada didn’t miss a beat. “Could you say for certain it wasn’t?” She gave a saccharine smile, laid her hand over James’. “I’ve heard it often said that none can truly divine the will of Heaven.” James could feel her growing disdain for Aaron like the air before a thunderstorm.

“I understand you have a child,” Pierce said, as if this wasn’t all going disastrously awry.

Ada, apparently, had had her fill. “I’m not going to make small talk with you about my daughter, General. All due respect.” She set her wine glass aside. “Perhaps you could tell me what it is you so badly wanted to discuss.”

Pierce hadn’t expected that, and James almost felt bad for him, watching him blink in surprise. “You understand,” Pierce said, “we find ourselves in a rather difficult situation.”

“I don’t see what’s difficult about it at all,” Ada replied. “You came, knowing that my husband had already been granted sanctuary, and now you wish to do what? Stay and observe? You’ll be dreadfully bored, all the terms are being honored.”

Pierce considered her for a moment, and sat back in his chair. “How many people here know who your husband is, Mrs. Metzger?”

James looked up. “Our household, and the pastor. You’re thinking it will cause chaos if you reveal it to the town. After all, there are already rumors flying about your presence here. The situation is ripe for exploitation.”

“You don’t think it will cause upset?” Pierce asked.

“I think you’re underestimating my wife.” It was half a bluff, but not a bad one. If anyone could keep Carlston from revolting with nothing more than an intimate knowledge of its people, it would be Ada. She had wanted to tell them ahead of time, at town meeting, to avoid just a situation like this, but James had refused. It would have endangered all of them. It would still endanger them, if Pierce decided to try his hand at creating chaos.

“One should note,” Ada said, plucking a still warm biscuit from a plate, “that it is a Bishop’s Man’s duty to ensure that, as long as the terms of sanctuary are being honored, the ward of the church is kept safe.”

Aaron scoffed. “And how did you manage that?” he asked James. “I’ve been meaning to ask what kind of pastor would ever agree to grant you sanctuary.”

Sharp as a whip-crack Ada said, “The kind that wanted to marry his wife.” Either she said it out of spite or to keep them off-balance, but James wished she hadn’t.

Corbley had to smother a laugh. Ada took a swallow of wine, and looked to Pierce. “You haven’t answered my question, General. What do you mean to do here? Because as far as I can tell, your sole intention is to disrupt the peace.”

“A convenient way to allow yourself to continue to shelter an unrepentant murderer,” Aaron said. “Doesn’t it keep you up at night, Mrs. Metzger?”

“Many things keep me up at night, Mr. Reyes, but I feel no need to share my troubles with you.” Ada looked at Pierce. “Does Mr. Reyes speak for you, now? Shall I direct all my questions to him?”

She had hit upon a nerve. Pierce sat up a little straighter, gave Aaron a sharp look. “Seeing as there are no other Bishop’s Men in Carlston, Mrs. Metzger, we would be remiss in not staying to monitor that all the terms are honored. Being that you yourself are the only other enforcer of the law, you understand why the church might not accept your testimony in that regard.”

“Nor that of the pastor that’s smitten with you,” Aaron said, too pleased that Ada had shown her hand.

Ada grew very quiet for a moment. “So you intend to stay until…?”

“There will be a military presence monitoring Mr. Metzger until either the terms are violated and he may be summoned to trial, or until the event of his death.” Pierce gazed steadily at James. “Unless, of course, he chooses to repent.”

Repentance, it always came back to repentance. Confess to the world that you were wrong and reinforced the power of the church to determine what was right. They wanted him to denounce everything that men and women who trusted him had died for.

It wasn’t his place to say that men like Stevenson had died for nothing.

“Of course,” Pierce said, “no decision needs to be reached immediately.”

#

Aaron hated the woman. She simpered and smirked and danced the dance and made quite a pretty little show with James, but it was all false. It was too pointedly directed at him to be real. Their marriage was a sham, and Ada Metzger was as much or more a participant in that charade as James.

Hansen had remarked how convenient it was, that she had gotten married just before it would have been illegal for her to own land as an unmarried woman. Whether or not she had known about James at the time—and Aaron doubted James would have kept the lie up for very long at all, he was too concerned about doing the honorable thing, especially where women were concerned—she knew now, and she meant to defend him.

Her reasons were unimportant, Aaron was much more concerned with what lengths she was willing to go to. James had entrusted his life to this woman who evaded church sanction like a fish slipping free of a fisherman’s hands.

Sanctuary. Who would have ever thought someone would grant such a thing to James Metzger, and for the sake of a woman? His wife had stopped just short of saying that she had fucked the pastor to obtain it, but at this point it didn’t matter. James was at once untouchable, and effectively a prisoner of Carlston.

Arrogant as she was, she got very quiet at the mention of Bishop’s Men staying in her town, and Aaron allowed himself to feel a small amount of triumph. This was a small town, it would only take a handful of soldiers to make their presence felt, to interrupt whatever little frontier paradise she had made for herself.

If she knew a damn thing at all about James, she knew he would start to chafe at the restriction, that it would only be a matter of time before he did something stupid.

She noticed Aaron watching her, and the movement around her eyes was subtle but unmistakable. Were he not surrounded by Bishop’s Men, she would put the bullet in his head herself.

She murmured something in James’ ear and rose. “Leaving so soon?” Aaron asked.

“I need to get back to my daughter,” she said coolly. “But there’s no reason my absence should disturb any of the rest of you.” The Kelchak stayed behind, and Aaron gathered their purpose was to keep James out of trouble.

Not as foolhardy as she looked, then.

“I’m going out for a smoke,” Aaron announced. “Don’t wait for me.” He avoided Pierce’s gaze as he rose. Pierce wanted to analyze Aaron’s every feeling and thought about James, to arrange it into something neat and orderly that made sense to him—as if there had ever once been anything tidy about his relationship with James. Pierce wanted to find a path through the woods, and all Aaron had was a thicket of thorns. It wasn’t any of Pierce’s concern, anyway.

The only reason he wanted to know was because of his own preoccupation with James, and maybe, Aaron sometimes allowed himself to think, because of jealousy.

Such a strange thing, to think that Pierce might have gotten so attached to him as to be jealous. An indulgent thought, surely, and one Aaron tried not to give much weight to.

He could feel James’ eyes burning holes in his back as he let the door fall shut behind him, winding his way out of the tavern.

The people of Carlston marked him as a stranger, and whispered as Aaron passed. He heard his own name, and James’—the true and the false, both—and wondered how many had guessed.

Aaron leaned against the outside wall of the tavern, smoking. He wasn’t at all surprised when, a few minutes later, James emerged with his Kelchak babysitters.

The lizards hung back a little, talking between themselves, as James walked toward Aaron, leaning back on the rail. For a moment they just stared at each other, the weight of everything unspoken tied around their necks, daring each other to make the first move.

It was James, who spoke first. “So. Pierce.”

Aaron rolled his head to the side, looked bored. “Enjoying married life?”

“More than you might expect.” James’ hands shifted against the rail. “We’re thinking of having another child.”

“Good for you.” He could make a pack of brats that could all live with the fact that their father was the most hated man in the Covenant. “What will your wife do when you die?”

“The same as she did before we were married, I imagine. Just fine.” James was looking for answers in Aaron’s face. Pierce did the same, but unlike Pierce, James knew what he was looking for. “Why the fuck did you do it?”

Aaron blew smoke in his face, and James didn’t so much as flinch. “Because I wasn’t going to die for your war.”

“I didn’t mean why you left.”

“Oh?” He would have thought that would be the only thing James would want to know about.

“I meant why were you rebaptized.”

Ah. Aaron smiled. “How else could I wash myself clean of you?”

James lifted his chin, and looked away. He was hurt, and trying not to show it. “You’d sell out anyone for your own comfort, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, don’t act so high and mighty,” Aaron said. “You spent the entire war telling everyone how ready and willing you were to die for the cause, and now look at you. Playing house with some woman with small ambitions and pretending you’ll be content with that. If you wanted us to win, you should have become the martyr you always wanted to be.” Aaron flicked his cigarette at James, and James batted it away with a practiced hand. “Martyrs can’t disappoint their followers.”

James grimaced. “I thought you were dead. Then I wished you were.”

Aaron felt that in his gut, as he knew he was meant to. The days when James might have restrained himself, might have bothered to be gentle with Aaron, were a long time gone. “I’m only Judas if you paint yourself as Christ.”

“Don’t start—”

“You always thought you could bear everyone’s sins,” Aaron spat, venom on his tongue. “Swallow them down and make the world holy. You’re not a prophet, and you’re not a savior. You’re just a man who failed to win a war.”

James gazed at him, and Aaron saw weary sadness in his eyes, and hated him for it. What goddamn right did James have to be tired?

“And what does that make you?” James asked. “A turncoat? A scorned lover?”

“I have a future,” Aaron said, “a chance to make something of myself. You have a wife you’ll get pregnant just so you can fill your life with children and pretend that’s happiness. If you live, that is.”

“Right,” James said, “you spent all this time, and came all this way, just to see me tried and shot.”

Aaron had started to see it in his dreams, James’ trial and execution. He imagined the torments James would suffer in a church prison, the glee with which the news would latch onto his humiliations. Aaron would wake feeling nauseous. “Seems to me you’ve spent enough time escaping judgment.”

#

Micah sat next to the cradle, rocking it gently. Clairy kept tugging at his fingers, babbling nonsense. Mrs. Finnbar had asked him to put her down for the night, because she needed to speak to Miss Webb.

He recognized James’ footsteps on the stairs, the creak of the floorboards as he stood in the door of the nursery.

James put a hand on Micah’s shoulder and settled behind him, wrapping his arms around Micah and pressing his face into the crook of Micah’s neck. He smelled like cigarette smoke. Micah sunk his fingers into James’ arm, as if he might hold him to life through sheer power of will. “What happened? Mrs. Finnbar didn’t tell me anything about it.”

James shifted, reaching into the cradle when Clairy tugged at his sleeve and letting her grip and pull at his fingers. “They’re going to stay and do everything they can to make me violate the terms of sanctuary. They want me miserable.”

It sounded a lot like they were succeeding. Micah leaned back into James’ chest, lacing his fingers through James’. “We can outlast this,” he said, soft. “They can’t stay here forever.” He wanted to believe that was true, anyway. They could adapt, they could survive.

James kissed Micah’s cheek. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“For what?” Micah asked, alarm rising in his throat.

“For bringing you into this.” James held him more tightly. “For being so damned selfish.”

Micah pulled out of his arms and turned around, putting his hands on James’ knees. “Shut the fuck up.”

James blinked, surprised.

“Don’t tell me all of this is just because you’re selfish,” Micah said, his voice shaking. “I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it. You trusted me, and—” Micah drew in a breath, tried to smile. “Damn it, James, you love me, don’t you?”

All the time spent talking, dancing. The way that James smiled when Micah teased him, kissed him just to kiss him. The weight of James’ hand against his back in a quiet moment when they didn’t need to talk. All the nights when he had listened to Micah’s worries and eased them, he never seemed burdened by them. He wasn’t going to let James diminish that as selfishness, as if it were an inconvenience to Micah.

Clairy started to cry, and James began to rock her cradle again, and she quieted. He gazed down at her, and then he looked at Micah, and there was so much pain in his eyes, Micah wanted to smooth it away, ease it into something softer. “I do,” he said softly. “So damned much it terrifies me.”

Micah put his hand to James’ face, tracing his thumb over an old scar on his jaw. “Don’t apologize for that. Not to me.”

#

Josephine was a kind girl, but Ruth knew she was being kept at arm’s length. Leah may have raised her since birth, but she was James’ child through and through, distant and withdrawn by her very nature, the way she best knew to protect herself. It almost burned, to look at her niece and see her little brother, to see in Josephine the same bitterness toward James that they had all harbored for their father.

Ruth had asked only once, what Josephine knew about James, and the icy “Enough,” had said plenty.

Leah did what she could, to see that Ruth was comfortable. She gave Ruth her own quarters, bought her new dresses—nothing too extravagant, but more in line with the fashions she herself was wearing—and introduced her to her circle. Even Mrs. Finnbar worked to include her, and Ruth appreciated it, she did… but the world that Leah and her family inhabited was alien to Ruth.

People with money, people who had always had money—they were like an entirely different species to her. The things they talked about, the concerns that dominated their lives, they were nothing Ruth knew anything about, or could even bring herself to care about.

She felt lonely.

Josephine was occupied with her own work and friends, and Leah spent hours in private conversation with Mrs. Pierce. Ruth didn’t want to intrude on their lives, didn’t want to become burdensome to them, and so she found herself in Mrs. Finnbar’s garden, pulling up weeds and clipping back vines. She had kept a small flower garden, when she lived with Matthew. It had represented for her everything that she had endured and come out the other side of. The flowers were a well-earned peace.

“I talk to the flowers, too, when I get lonely.”

Ruth glanced up from the roses she had been pruning. “Mrs. Finnbar,” she said, “I hope I’m not overstepping.”

“Not at all,” Mrs. Finnbar said, settling on a bench with her cane. “I’ve been reluctant to hire a full-time gardener. Suppose I resent that I can’t do most of it myself, anymore.” She smiled, the wrinkles around her eyes deepening. “I’m sorry that I haven’t made more time to talk to you, I’ve been terribly rude.”

“Please don’t say that,” Ruth said, “You’ve been so generous—and everything you’ve done for Leah, and for Josephine—I don’t know how I could ever repay you.”

“They’re my family, as well,” Mrs. Finnbar said, “and I suppose that makes us a sort of kin. You don’t need to repay me for that.”

“Can I ask you something?” Ruth brushed the dirt from her skirts. “About yourself?”

“Of course,” Mrs. Finnbar answered, though she seemed surprised.

“Why did you take Leah and James in? Out of every stray in the city, why them?” It was a part of Leah’s story that she simply couldn’t make sense of, why a widowed woman would chance upon a boy in a seedy fighting ring, and decide to bring him and his sister home, after knowing them each for less than a few hours.

Mrs. Finnbar considered the question, strands of grey hair falling from the bun at the nape of her neck. “They reminded me of myself, I suppose,” she said. “As I was at their age. Determined to survive, unable to plan past the next day. I wanted to give them more than just ‘tomorrow.’” She looked at Ruth. “I wasn’t born into this. It was as strange to me once as I’m sure it is to you. This cloistered little world… the people who never leave it have no idea how small it is. What it takes to survive.”

Ruth decided she liked Mrs. Finnbar. She joined the old woman on the bench, the clipped, wilted head of a rose in her hand. “I used to think I could solve everything with a fresh start, a place where nobody knew my name.” The bruised petals of the rose felt so fragile and soft in her palm. “But there are no fresh starts. You carry all your scars inside you, wherever you go. Maybe no one else can see them, but you can feel them there, and no amount of running will leave them behind.”

Mrs. Finnbar gazed at her roses, old and flourishing from years of tender care. “I think the Covenant is like that as well,” she said. “We try to wash away our sins, but no baptismal font can wash away the blood steeped into the very soil.” She smiled sadly at Ruth. “Sometimes,” she said, “I think that if God chose this place for anything, it was a place to put sinners for their own ruin.”

Ruth had often had that thought, after Matthew died. Not a flood, but an exile. Forty years in the wilderness with no promised land on the other side.

“I feel as if I’ve come here to die,” Ruth said.

A warm wind stirred the garden, and Mrs. Finnbar sighed. “You just haven’t found a purpose yet.”

#

Josephine stood on the roof of the house, and leveled the telescope at the Earth-born station, blinking over the eastern horizon. It was close enough to see in the daylight, when the clouds parted. At night, though, it glowed against the stars, and Josephine wondered what they were like, the people that had built it, that watched the Covenant from above. What did they see, and what did they think of what they saw?

She heard the door open behind her, and looked over her shoulder expecting her mother, or Ruth. Miriam Pierce clasped her hands together, and looked up at the sky. “I thought that might be what you were looking at. People hardly talk about anything else, these days.”

A month before an Earth-born shuttle had landed in Kelchak territory, and left again a few days later. The Bishop’s Men had watched the border intently, but as far as anyone knew, the Earth-borns had made no attempt to enter the Covenant.

Mrs. Pierce looked at Josephine, and it was hard to see much of her in the dark, but she looked sad. “I understand, if you don’t want to talk to me—”

“You have no right to do this,” Josephine said. To corner her, in her own home—with her mother’s permission, no doubt.

Mrs. Pierce bit her lip, and started again. “You don’t need to say anything at all, and you can think whatever you like of me, but I have things I need to say to you, whether you want to hear them or not.” She stood firmly in front of the door, as if she thought Josephine would try to flee.

“I tried to tell him about you, once. You would have been about five.” Mrs. Pierce looked up at the sky again. “He avoided me, though, and I never got the chance. I still wonder if I should have tried harder, but I was so afraid of what would happen if we were discovered…” She shook her head. “I wanted the best for you. That’s why I asked Leah to take care of you. You would have suffered so much, being raised by my family.”

Somewhere in the city a car horn blared, Josephine could hear a group of drunk young men roaming the street.

“I wish I could explain it to you in a way that wouldn’t make me seem so… callous,” Mrs. Pierce said. “But you’re too smart for that. I didn’t love him, and he certainly didn’t love me. Not as a lover, anyway. It wasn’t a romance, on either side. But seeing you, the person you’ve become—I don’t think either of us would do anything differently.”

Josephine pursed her lips. “Is his memory so powerful?”

Mrs. Pierce looked at her, puzzled.

“You, my mother, Mrs. Finnbar, my aunt Ruth—you all talk as if you still know who he is, and none of you have seen him in over twenty years. As if he couldn’t possibly have changed in that time.” She was so tired of this, how enchanted everyone was with the memory of a man who had brought nothing but death and pain. “Even Mr. Reyes, happily telling me about the horrors of war, it was so clear he was still infatuated. What could possibly be so remarkable about this man?”

Mrs. Pierce watched her a moment, a breeze picking up. “Perhaps it’s best that you feel that way,” she said, looking out at the city. “The reason I came to tell you this was because my husband called me this evening. They’ve found him. Likely, he’ll be dead soon.” She looked at Josephine, and opened the door. “I’m sorry to have troubled you.”


	21. Communion

Micah meant to take a walk, to slip into the brothel and see his friends, and to get a feel for the gossip about the Bishop’s Men’s arrival. He was surprised to have woken before James, and dressed quietly, leaving a kiss against his shoulder.

Mrs. Finnbar was awake, Clairy on her hip, reading the news with an intent frown in the dining room. She didn’t notice Micah until he said hello to her, and she looked tired. “Oh, good morning, Mr. Deering.” They chatted a little as if nothing were wrong, as if that morning were like any other. Micah didn’t ask her what she was reading that made that grim look form on her face.

There was a heavy bank of storm clouds on the horizon, threatening an out of season rain. Micah wished he could leave the suit jacket and vest behind, it was so hot out, but walking about in just shirtsleeves, he had learned, was frowned upon if you weren’t a field worker or a miner. He was the Finnbars’ steward, the town had certain expectations of him. 

Micah shielded his eyes from the sun. James must have offered to buy him a hat a dozen times, but Micah’s vanity outweighed the glint of the sun in his eyes, and the burn on the back of his neck.

He was maybe halfway to the brothel, when he noticed the Bishop’s Man watching him. From James’ description, he recognized General Pierce, but he forgot about the general entirely when he noticed the man standing next to him, the man with thick dark curls not unlike his own, dark eyes, and a honey brown face. He wasn’t a Bishop’s Man, he didn’t have a uniform, just a red jacket, with gold buttons. He looked like Micah, twenty years older.

Micah stopped where he stood, an unpleasant feeling sinking into his stomach.

General Pierce nudged the man, said something to him, and without being able to move Micah watched him turn, watched the surprise in his eyes. The man got up, and approached Micah with a cold smile. “Hullo,” he said, his voice deceptively friendly. “What’s your name?”

Micah wanted to leave, and get away, and deny the growing sense of dread creeping over his skin. “Micah Deering.”

“And where do you work, Micah Deering?” Micah had the feeling he knew what kind of answer the man expected.

He wanted to lie, but it was a small town, and this man could just ask someone else, if he wanted to. Micah felt his face burn. “I’m steward to the Finnbars.”

The man laughed, a sharp, cruel laugh. “You know who I am, don’t you?”

Micah had a guess.

“Do tell James,” the man said, grinning nearly from ear to ear, “that Aaron Reyes said hello.”

All the humiliations that Micah had ever known, and this was one of the worst. He turned on his heel and made back for the house, Reyes’ laughter echoing in his ears.

Micah didn’t mean to slam the door, but he did, and heard Mrs. Finnbar curse in startled surprise. James stepped into the hall, looking to see what was going on, and at the sight of him Micah’s face burned again. “You son of a bitch!” he shouted, “You lying, shallow bastard!”

Alarm spread across James’ face, he tried to ask what was wrong, reached for Micah, and Micah slapped his hand away, feeling tears burn at the corners of his eyes. “I just met Mr. Reyes,” he snapped, and without any satisfaction at all he watched the color go out of James’ face. “So you didn’t notice anyone else when you saw me, was it?”

“Micah—”

He shoved past James, running past him up the stairs, and slamming the door behind him. He was shaking, and felt a fool. Everything he had believed about their relationship was somehow tainted now, by the knowledge that he looked exactly like Aaron Reyes. Reyes had seen him and known immediately what he was to James, had laughed at him.

“Idiot!” Micah shouted, his voice harsh in the walls of the small room. All the months he had spent sleeping in this room with James, letting himself believe this was something special, something innocent, even. Every nightmare he had soothed in the middle of the night, every word about how beautiful he was, all of it was—what? A replacement for what James had lost?

Was that all he was?

James had followed him upstairs. He opened the door and Micah stalked away from him, arms hugged across his chest. “Micah,” James said, soft. “I’m sorry.”

“All this fucking time and you couldn’t have told me?” Micah demanded, turning. “You couldn’t have told me from the very beginning that’s all this was?”

“That’s not what this is,” James said.

“You saw me that day in the brothel and the only thing you saw was him.” Micah didn’t want to cry, not about this, but he couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down his face and he didn’t want to imagine how pathetic he looked.

After a moment, James nodded. “Then, yes. That’s what drew me to you. But it isn’t why I kept coming back. This, here and now, it has nothing to do with Aaron.”

“I don’t fucking believe you.” Micah was so angry, he had never been this angry in his life. “Reyes laughed in my face when I told him I was steward here, because he knew what I was to you.”

“No,” James said, “he only thinks he knows.”

“Shut up!” Micah snapped. “He humiliated me, and that’s all you can say?” The scales had fallen from his eyes and all he wanted was to be blind again, to not know. “You let me fall in love with you.” He hadn’t been able to say it in so many words, too afraid of the reality of it, but James hadn’t seemed to mind.

“I thought I shouldn’t.” James looked fragile for a moment. “I thought I shouldn’t get too attached, that I’ve been a burden on everyone I’ve ever loved. But here, in this place, with you, I thought I could be selfish. I didn’t want to tell you about Aaron because you aren’t him, and I stopped looking for him a long time ago.”

If Micah looked at James a moment longer he was going to want to reach out and be comforted, and he couldn’t do that. Not right now. He wasn’t going to brush it all away so that he could pretend that everything was alright. “Get out.” Micah’s voice shook when he said it.

James left without arguing, and Micah sank onto the bed, and crumbled. 

#

The air was suffocatingly hot, and Ester held Clairy up in the kitchen sink, running over her skin with a damp cloth. The door to the dining room was open, so that she could clearly see Ada and James sitting across from each other, not looking at one another, not speaking.

People had been calling all day, trying to figure out why the Bishop’s Men were in town, speculating wildly, until Ester simply had Mrs. Hammond turn off the phones, and put them away.

Micah had not come downstairs since morning, though Ester knew the heat had to be even worse up there. James had spoken hardly at all, since then.

Ada had described Reyes to her, that first night. “If you didn’t know them, you’d swear they were brothers. Hell, they might be, some Reyes relative could have gotten as far north as a Chapel brothel. Micah’s going to kill him.”

James did seem to have suffered a death of the spirit. He couldn’t look anyone in the eye, couldn’t speak above a mumble.

Ada had set a glass of ice water in front of him that had since become warm water.  

Ester was just pulling Clairy from the sink, to dry her so that she could lay her down for a nap, when James finally broke the silence. “I have to go.”

“Go where?” Ada asked.

“To trial.”

“Why don’t I shoot you myself and save us all the trouble?” Ada snapped. “You want to throw your life away now because he’s rightfully angry at you?”

“What’s the alternative?” James asked. “Clairy grows up with Bishop’s Men crawling all over this town, being told every horrible thing I’ve ever done, and some I didn’t just to make sure she understands?”

“So you’d rather she grew up knowing all that with you dead in the meantime,” Ada replied. “The only thing going with them will get you is humiliation and a long, painful death.” Ada noticed Ester, and held out her arms for Clairy, who reached for her with a giggle.

Ester put her hands on Ada’s shoulders, looking over Ada’s head at James. “It’s too soon to give up,” she said. “I read for you today, and God is not done with you, yet.”

James grimaced. He put no stock in her readings, though he was too polite to say so. “What am I supposed to do, then?”

“You’ve spent so many years fighting,” Ester told him, “now, you have to wait.”

“Wait for what?” Ester could already see how fiercely he loathed the thought of stillness, of inaction.

“For us to figure something out,” Ada muttered. “Or do you have so little faith in me?” Under Ester’s hands, her shoulders were tight as coiled springs. That phrase struck her— _Do you have so little faith in me?_ It was something she had heard Ada say to Rebecca a dozen times, over something as frivolous as a sneaking out to a party, or as serious as avoiding their father’s wrath.

_Let me help you,_ Ada was saying. _Don’t throw yourself into the sea._

Whether or not James knew that’s what she was saying, Ester didn’t know.

“Town meeting is coming up,” he said, watching Clairy. “What are we going to tell them?”

“The truth,” Ada said. “Some of them will already have guessed. Then I’ll have to hope and pray that everything we’ve done for them over the years counts for something. But I won’t give this over to Pierce and Reyes. We have to cling to whatever power we have left.” Ada bounced Clairy on her knee, restless.

“Why are you doing this?” James asked. “You’re endangering everything, when you could throw me at their feet and save everyone else.”

“Is that what you would do, if you were in Ada’s position?” Ester asked.

James looked at her, and they both knew the answer without his saying it. He considered himself disposable, but no one else was.

“I have to consult with Pastor Richards,” Ada said. “He’ll understand church law better than any of us.”

“Do you really think,” James said, “after everything, that he’ll help us?”

Ada sighed. “I have to try.” 

#

Micah would not speak to James, wouldn’t even look at him or acknowledge his presence, if he didn’t have to.

Ada had asked—in a way that wasn’t so much asking as it was giving an order—that he didn’t leave the house without Corbley or Hanasut, and as they were otherwise occupied, James spent a lot of time in an uncomfortably quiet house, trying to occupy his time with Clairy.

He couldn’t work, couldn’t go out, couldn’t figure out how to ease the heavy weight of loneliness that had settled on his shoulders.

And maybe that was why he ignored Ada’s request-that-was-actually-an-order to leave the house the evening before town meeting, on his own. He just had to look at faces that weren’t in his household, to look at walls that weren’t his own.

There were eyes on him when he stepped inside the tavern. People whispered. No one said hello. The Perkins boy who was keeping the bar that night was less talkative, when he got to James. Usually, he would chat, joke, hoping to earn a generous tip. That night, all he said was, “What’ll it be?”

James felt worse, for having come out. A couple of the men Pierce had brought were in the tavern, drinking. In uniform, guns on their hips. The more sober of the two had noticed James, was watching him.

He was considering leaving when a familiar face appeared at his left, smirking. “Quite the houseboy you have. And here I thought you spent the last two years playing good Christian husband.” Aaron was so smug, or at least that’s what he wanted James to think. They had known each other too long for James to miss the sheen of resentment in his eyes.

James might almost have felt satisfaction at that jealousy, if Micah weren’t so angry at him. “Go to Hell.”

“So testy,” Aaron said, waving to the barkeep for a drink. “And starting off the night with liquor, you must be in a sour mood. He’s upset with you, isn’t he? Seemed like the sensitive type.”

“At least he doesn’t feel the need to conceal it under a smug sense of superiority,” James replied, staring at the far wall. He wasn’t prepared to be this near to Aaron again, and the last person he wanted to discuss Micah with was Aaron.

“Does your wife know?” Aaron asked, nearly gleeful. “What a shame, if she were to find out her husband had been fucking her steward under her own roof, and she had no idea.”

James couldn’t help it, he scoffed. “Your biggest weakness,” he said, looking at Aaron, “is how ready you are to make assumptions.”

Aaron didn’t like that at all. James watched the flash of hate in his eyes. “I’m surprised she let you off your leash,” he said. “She seems like a woman who likes to keep her pets under control.”

“What do you want, Aaron?” James didn’t want to play this game, didn’t want Aaron to goad him to retaliating. Not with two armed Bishop’s Men sitting just across the way.

Aaron considered that question, head cocked to the side, and for a moment James saw him at twenty again, cruel because he could be. “His pretty little neck seems perfectly unharmed,” Aaron said. “Are you worried you’ll put your hands around it and forget it’s not mine?”

James left his whiskey unfinished, starting to rise. Aaron stepped in front of him, and for a moment James imagined backhanding him into the nearest table.

“Easy now,” Aaron said, as if he were talking to a particularly uncooperative animal. “All I want to do is talk.”

“That’s a load of shit,” James answered. Words were never just words, with Aaron. They were tools, a means to an end. Weapons and fish hooks that he sharpened against his tongue and called jokes.

Aaron shrugged. “Let me put it this way, then: the idiots behind me are just drunk enough to be dreaming of the glory they’ll get for killing you, if you’re seen violating the terms of sanctuary. And you can either talk to me here, or I’ll follow you home—and wouldn’t our dear Mr. Deering love that?” Aaron smiled. “My room is just down the hall, if you’d like to speak privately.”

James had the thought that it would be as bad an idea to refuse Aaron as it would be to agree, and that he hadn’t had nearly enough whiskey to make either choice.

Aaron took half a step closer, and James could smell his cigarettes, as familiar as water. “Haven’t you missed me?” he asked, voice as soft as a serpent’s.

Always so God-damned arrogant, and James hated that he had missed that arrogance. Hated that Aaron’s glittering cold smile still stirred something in him, hated that he knew what Aaron was after.

“Is Pierce leaving you so lonely?” James asked quietly.

Aaron chuckled, and shook his head. “You should hear the way he talks about you,” Aaron murmured. “You’d think he was the one spent twenty years with you.”

James felt a pang in his chest that he tried to ignore. The only reason Aaron would tell him something like that was to get into his head. “I’m not going to your room.” That would be beyond stupid, to let Aaron choose a place for them to be alone. For all he knew, someone was waiting to catch them.

“Well, I’m sure your wife’s house will be perfectly suitable—”

“I didn’t say I was going home.”

Aaron looked at him curiously, raised a brow. “Oh?”

James shrugged, shouldered past Aaron for the door. He was maybe twenty steps from the door when he heard Aaron behind him, catching up in the warm evening. It wasn’t truly dark, yet, but the sky was purple and not many people were out.

“And where are we going?” Aaron asked.

“Somewhere private.”

James had always liked those transitional hours, at dawn and dusk, when the world was quiet but not quite asleep, painted in yellows and purples. This time of night, the area around the mine would be entirely empty, and having spent a lot of time there since he had first arrived, James knew which storehouses were rarely locked.

Aaron hummed a tune under his breath, a song James had used to sing about Janesville. He hadn’t thought about that song in years.

“Oh, this brings back memories,” Aaron said, looking around the room, stuffed full of tools for repairing machinery. Stolen moments in any place that was out of the elements, away from prying eyes. James turned and Aaron’s mouth was on his, familiar and cruel.

James stepped back, smiled bitterly. “I thought you wanted to talk.”

Aaron looked at him a moment, and for once, he didn’t immediately bite back. “That woman,” Aaron said, “the only reason you married was so she could hold onto this land, wasn’t it?”

“I’m not going to talk about my marriage with you.”

Aaron laughed softly, looked away. “It’s not right, you married, and me with Pierce. None of this is right.”

“I’m not the one that made it that way.” James had thought a lot about if he ever would have left Aaron first. Twenty years and a war together… and he didn’t think he would have. It was Aaron that had to break, to bring an end to them. James had started to think that maybe that was for the better.

James didn’t put much stock in “God’s plan,” it had always seemed a convenient way to ignore injustice, but if the Lord did make some influence on the course of events—then maybe there was a reason things had played out as they had, at least where his relationship to Aaron was concerned.

“I was just thinking the other day,” Aaron said, “about when we met. I had seen you fight a few times, before I ever spoke to you.”

“I saw you in the crowd,” James answered. They had done this back and forth before, going over some key moment in their history, creating their story. James didn’t know why they had done it, it had seemed important to Aaron, and the talking had given them a way to fill silence, in the later years.

“I remember I asked someone why they called you Lazarus,” he said. “And a regular at the ring told me you fought like Death himself couldn’t stop you. Every time someone knocked you down you got up, even when it looked like it would kill you. Even when you should have given up four hits earlier.”

“What is this about, Aaron?”

Aaron looked at him, and there was weariness in his eyes. “You think I didn’t have to come looking for you, but I did. I couldn’t let you go because you never, ever knew when to stay down.”

“I would have stayed here,” James said, “I would have stayed down. For Clairy.”

Aaron shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t have. Sooner or later you would have realized that the world is still a broken, fucked place, not good enough for your daughter that’s for sure, and you would have fought again and people would have followed you.” Aaron looked at him with the weight of a thousand things unsaid. “I won’t let you or your fool wife start another war.”

“If you hate me so much then why do you want me alone?”

Aaron stepped forward, tilted his face up as if for a kiss. “I never got to say a proper goodbye.”

James recalled the couple of times his father had tried to give up drinking. How he trembled with want for the same thing that he knew was killing him. How he always gave in.

Aaron’s mouth tasted like cigarettes. He sighed into James, his hands coming up to the back of James’ neck, pulling himself closer. “This is my body,” he whispered against James’ lips, “broken for you.” He was exactly as James remembered him, always hungry and wanting more. His hands had gotten softer, since the last time James felt them, spoiled by luxury.

He didn’t care about Pierce or anyone else Aaron might have passed the time with in those two years. The painful thing he had felt nested deep in his chest since he saw Aaron had broken open, a flood that threatened to sweep him away. Nearly half his life belonged to Aaron, half his life bound with thorns and honey, messy and painful and so integral to everything he had become.

There would have been no war, no John James Metzger without Aaron Reyes.

Aaron pulled him down, on the bags of sand that were used to cover over the entrance of the mine before the floods. Their first time had been fumbling and graceless in the dark. This was dark again, but that was all those times had in common. They could never be strangers again, never be entirely disentangled.

Aaron called it goodbye. James thought it felt dangerously like hello. 

#

“Did you know that he was the one they were looking for?” Hanasut asked, adjusting the heat lamp in the greenhouse. She didn’t understand the nuances of this upheaval, and wasn’t sure she cared to. The humans’ war was their own concern.

Corbley was grooming away the last of a molt, rubbing grit over the flaking scales. “Yeah. I knew.”

“And yet you helped him anyway.” She looked at Corbley, this Kelchak with his human name, who wore human clothes and worked for and with humans, who affected the speech patterns of the miners so that they would have something in common.

“He’s a friend.” Corbley shook their head, spines clicking together.

“He wasn’t then.”

“He is now.”

“I don’t understand your relationship to this place,” Hanasut said. “Humans distrust Kelchak. They distrust anything they find strange.”

Corbley shrugged. “Far as most round here are concerned, I’m not the strangest thing in Carlston. And it ain’t like our people like them anymore’n they like us.”

“You even think like them now,” Hanasut said, “among our own, no one would ever say you and I share a ‘people.’” She was from Kapuko stock, from the deserts. Corbley was from the tropics, the Hukal, and any culture they shared was only because they were of the same planet and species. They spoke with some fluency the same standardized dialect of the Kelchak who had wandered to far-flung stars, a creole of dominant Kelchak languages, but it wasn’t a mother tongue for either of them.

“Well, you’ll have to forgive me,” Corbley grumbled. “It ain’t like I spend much time around my own folk these days.”

Hanasut bedded down on the sand. “I am sorry. I spoke insensitively.”

Corbley eyed her, and shrugged. “What’d you come here for?”

“To learn the language humans speak, and study them.”

“Sure, which is why you spend so much time with me. Why’d you really come?”

Hanasut felt her spines flicker with embarrassment. “Lirimahk asked me to ensure that you were healthy.”

Corbley grimaced, looked away. “Nosy _jiki_. You been in contact with her this whole time?”

“Only intermittently. I alerted her when… when I thought you might not survive your seizure, and again when you recovered.”

“For what?” Corbley asked. “So she could fetch my corpse?”

“So she could tell your father.”

Corbley sighed. “The poor old man should be left in peace, not worrying about me.”

“That is not your place to decide.” Hanasut was quiet. “He was the one who sent Lirimahk.”

Corbley had closed his eyes so as not to look at her.

“Anapar gave us the money, told us we should say it was in her name. It wasn’t about charging you with a crime.”

“What the hell was it about, then?” Corbley asked, angry.

“Making sure your children had a chance at surviving to adulthood.”

Corbley’s eyes flew open, seizing on Hanasut with shock and surprise. “What?”

“Eight hatched. I was hired with my brother to see to their medical care. He is still with them.”

“Eight,” Corbley repeated. “There were thirteen eggs.”

“Yes. It’s unusual for so many to survive, having a sire with your condition. That gave us hope that perhaps they were less severely affected. Some of them appear to have not inherited it at all, and those that have have been well cared for.” Hanasut gazed at him. “These humans, that you call your friends—they are not your kin or your people. They are running headfirst into trouble which will endanger you, as well. Your family wishes you to come home.”

“Why the fuck would you wait so long to tell me?” Corbley exploded. “You’ve been here two years and you didn’t think t’tell me I have eight kids?”

“I thought about it a great deal,” Hanasut asked. “I was given power of discretion, seeing as it was I and my brother who brought them up in your absence.” She glanced away. “I confess, I had a rather low opinion of you when I arrived. I have since… come to a better understanding of your person. Watching you with the human child and her family—”

“Her name’s Clairy.”

“—it became evident you were not so neglectful as I thought. Where are you going?” Corbley had risen, reaching for his human clothes.

He gave her such a venomous look, that Hanasut had never seen from him. “To talk to Mrs. Finnbar.” 

#

“Where the hell have you been?” Ada was furious, more furious than she could remember being in quite a long time. She had waited on the porch, in the dark, for over an hour before James came walking back up the street, as if it were a normal evening, and he hadn’t noticed her until she had stood and stepped in front of the door. Now, they stared at each other through the dark.

James tried to shoulder past her, apparently unaware that Ada was damned near immovable when she was angry. “I needed some air.”

“Choked with cigarettes, from the smell of you,” Ada replied coldly. “Why don’t you say hello to Reyes for me, next time that you see him?”

James stopped, sucking in a breath as if she’d wounded him, and that was all the confirmation Ada needed. “You son of a bitch,” she hissed between her teeth. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“It’s not like that.”

“Then maybe you should explain to me what it is like, because from where I stand, all I see is someone I’m trying to keep alive working very hard to thwart me at every turn.” Ada had her arms crossed, digging her fingers into her own skin. “You’re lonely for a few days and you go back to that viper looking for comfort.”

“I needed air,” James repeated. “I needed to not look at these same God-damned four walls so I went to the tavern and he was there.”

“Is that all you have to say for yourself?”

“Yes. That’s all there is to say.” He looked at her, sad and weary. “It was a mistake. God knows I’ve made enough of those.”

Ada could feel the bruises she had made in her arms. “Go to bed, James,” she said. “And don’t leave this fucking house by yourself again.” 

#

Aaron knew Pierce could smell James on his skin, could taste him on Aaron’s mouth. Pierce held him close, kissed him anyway.

Aaron lay awake in the dark, reluctant to fall asleep because it might mean dreaming.

There was no cooling system in the rooms they had taken in the tavern. The window was open to let in a breeze, and with it came the sounds of the night, the sing-screaming of insects, the occasional low of a disgruntled cow, the distant call of a pede in the woods. He had never been this close to wilderness, to the same dangers faced by the first settlement.

No wonder James had chosen this place, and chosen to stay. He needed something to fight, and the elements were no less formidable a foe than the church.

Maybe what Aaron needed was something to break. It was something he was good at, at least.

Exhaustion pulled him under a few hours before dawn, and Aaron woke alone, with an aching head. He scrubbed his face in the narrow bathroom and groomed with bleary eyes. He heard a bell clanging, and went to the window, grimacing. The bell hung under the lamp at the end of the street, where it seemed a temporary platform had been constructed out of ore crates and scrap building material. Mrs. Metzger was ringing the bell, apparently drawing the town to her to make an announcement.

Aaron opened the window to watch, resting his elbows in the sill. The hot, dry wind ran over his face and arms, stirred the dust in the street below. What a miserable place.

Mrs. Metzger waited in the shade of the platform until a considerable group had gathered, what seemed like nearly everyone in the town. People trailed in from the fields, stood on porches and under the steps where there was shade. Mrs. Metzger climbed up on the platform, leveraged up by the smaller of the Kelchak. She thumbed the brim of her hat at the crowd, and raised her voice to be heard even to Aaron’s window.

“Ladies and gentlemen of Carlston,” she said, “I owe you an explanation.” She paced across the front of the platform, hands on her hips. She even stood like a man. “You have all noticed the arrival of General Pierce, and his men. You understandably have many questions, and I will do my best to answer them.”

Aaron scanned the crowd for James, but he didn’t seem to be there. He wondered what Mrs. Metzger had said to him, to make him stay home.

“You want to know why General Pierce and Mr. Reyes are here. The answer is that they have come looking for John James Metzger… the name you know him by is James Finnbar.”

The surprise, the outcry. Two years they had known James, and never known who he was. Aaron tried to imagine it, the shock, the betrayal they must have felt. Wondering, had Mrs. Metzger always known? Had she been hiding him? Were they governed by a heretic?

Carlston would have kept them distant from the war. Perhaps the town was successful as it was because of the war, people who had fled it and people who had fled it’s repercussions. Some of them would have felt secure with the knowledge that it was Carlston ore that had been made into the weapons used to kill heretics. That they might know a heretic, that their landowner might be married not only to a heretic but the heretic, was unthinkable.

It was a delicious sort of chaos, one Mrs. Metzger was obviously trying to control by being the one to unleash it. He had used that technique himself, a few times, breaking bad news to their men. It was never one he enjoyed.

Too much a last resort, too unpredictable in its results.

Whatever their differences, Aaron supposed he had one thing in common with Mrs. Metzger: neither of them was going to yield without drawing blood.

“My husband has been granted sanctuary,” she went on, “and as such, General Pierce intends to keep his men here, to monitor Carlston until my husband may be either summoned to trial, or he passes. This will not be the case.”

Aaron put himself up on his hands, tense and wary. What the Hell was she talking about?

“I have consulted with Pastor Richards on some of the finer points of church law,” Mrs. Metzger said, “and one month from now, I will be leaving the running of Carlston in the hands of Miss Webb, so that I may go to the Settlement, and stand trial on my husband’s behalf.”

The surprise and alarm of the crowd barely registered over the poisonous hate that surged through Aaron’s limbs. That _witch._ Her transport would require an escort, making the Bishop’s Men’s presence in Carlston even smaller, and Pierce was unlikely to go himself, wanting to make sure none of his men took it into their heads to quietly take care of James when no one was looking and claim he attacked them. (Who would contradict them, after all?)

She was arrogant enough to think she could win, to manipulate and plead so efficiently that James would neither be killed or forced to repent—and that arrogance alone was enough for Aaron to think she might be able to do it.

That didn’t mean he was going to let her.

Not without drawing blood. 

#

“You can’t,” James said bluntly, when Ada told him what she meant to do.

They were sat at the dining room table again, which seemed to have become their place of planning, like generals pouring over maps. James had been gloomy, until she told him, and it seemed to startle some life back into him.

She arched her eyebrows, and knew he had known her long enough now to read that as the warning it was. “Excuse me?”

James didn’t balk. “The Settlement, the _Sanctum_ is not Carlston. They don’t know you and they won’t respect you and you won’t have half the power you have here.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t just hear you downplaying my accomplishments here.” Ada picked up her iced tea, wondering if the next wet season was going to be as abominably miserable as the present dry one.

“It will only expedite my death.”

“Finally, he has an interest in preserving his own life!” Ada cried, throwing a hand in the air. “My husband lives to be contrary to me.”

“Ada—”

“I will not have Bishop’s Men in Carlston a second longer than I have to.” She put a hand on her face. “Every queer and heretic who came here for good work and a place the landowner would make no move against them as long as they made no trouble—I can’t fill this place with soldiers. And you—I won’t have you forced to keep to daylight hours and limited movements, just so that no one murders you. You’ll be miserable and so will everyone else.”

“You can’t possibly expect that they won’t convict me of—highest heresy and war crimes and God only knows what else.”

“It’s not about avoiding conviction,” Ada said, “it’s about making the case that killing you or otherwise separating you from your family would be a catastrophic mistake.”

He was reluctant, he kept telling her how miserable it would be, to which she pointed out that she would not be tortured. Likely, she would eventually be investigated for sheltering a heretic, but not until his own trial was concluded, and she would cross that river when she came to it.

“What about Clairy?”

Ada felt a twinge in her gut. “She has to stay here,” she said, “she can still be fed on the bottle, for a while, and then weaned… it will be better for her to be here, with all of you, than with just me when I’ll be so strained.” The thought of leaving Clairy behind, of not seeing her for—months, maybe longer, it put a weight in Ada’s stomach that she couldn’t get rid of. If she was gone too long—would Clairy even recognize her when she came back?

The thought that hardened her resolve was imagining Clairy older, as a child or young woman, asking where her father was, and Ada having to tell her that she had done nothing. That James had adored her, and Ada had done nothing. She couldn’t do that.

Neither could she let Clairy grow up in the shadow of soldiers who watched their family’s every move. If she could do something, then she must.

“I’m not going alone,” she told James. “Corbley and Hanasut are both coming with me. And… when it is done, they are leaving.”

In some ways, that hurt more than the thought of being away from Clairy. Clairy would still be there, when she came back, but Corbley was leaving. She didn’t blame him, not in the slightest—but she already missed him every time he was out of her sight. She wanted to prod him with her elbow, make some joke that would make him roll his eyes, pretend it would all last forever.

But he was going away to meet his children, and he didn’t know if he would come back.

So Ada put herself to the task at hand, and told herself she must thank God for the time she had left.

The law that allowed a person to stand in for their spouse was meant for husbands to protect their wives, Pastor Richards had told her, reluctantly. The language was vague enough, though, that no one could make a real argument for why she couldn’t stand in for James. “I must advise you, Mrs. Metzger—you will have a very difficult time finding an attorney, but you must have one. Two would be better, but I would be surprised if you could find more than one. You are a quick learner, but your temper gets the best of you, and it would be better if you had men to speak for you in court.”

She was surprised, that he would give her that kind of advice, something that might actually be helpful. Perhaps he had sensed it, because he said, “I may not approve or understand, Mrs. Metzger, but I have already damaged a family that was not mine. I shall not commit that sin again.”

Ada had thanked him, though she couldn’t quite bring herself to apologize for the way she had treated him over the years. She remembered too keenly how he had tried to prevent her marriage, how many years he had spent trying to woo her despite her rebuffs and mistreatment. “At your heart, I think you’re a good man, Pastor Richards.” Perhaps she didn’t entirely feel it with conviction, but in the moment she meant it, and it seemed to reassure him, somewhat.

“You haven’t told him, have you?” Ester asked as she helped Ada pack her dresses. There would be no shirtsleeves and trousers in the Settlement. She must appear every inch the model Christian wife, to the best of her ability. A woman who could not be blamed for sheltering her husband. A woman who could argue from a place of virtue.

“I only told you because I knew you would guess,” Ada said. “You can’t tell him. The guilt and worry will kill him.”

“I worry over you, too,” Ester said.

“You worry because you know me,” Ada said, “he worries because he thinks it’s his fault.” She couldn’t stand that about James, how everything was his burden. Ester said that was because Ada thought it was her job to blame herself.

“I knew when the Jack of Hearts began to consistently appear next to your card,” Ester said. “It was the same with Clairy.”

“Do you think it will be another girl?”

“That I couldn’t say, and I wouldn’t try.” Ester touched her forehead to Ada’s, kissed the end of her nose. “Promise me you’ll take care of yourself.”

“I will,” Ada said. “I promise.”


	22. A Woman's House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The wise woman builds her house,  
> but the foolish tears it down with her own hands.  
> Proverbs 14:1

“Did you know?” Mrs. Randall blurted as Ada stepped down at the end of the town meeting. It had been a struggle to address any concern that wasn’t related to James, to remind them that the schoolhouse and the water tanks needed to be inspected before the season was over, a selection of steers slaughtered and processed so that the herd would not be as big during the floods and would have more room in the barns. Sarah Randall had watched Ada with burning eyes, her mouth shut tight, until she had a chance to speak to Ada directly. “Did you know who he was?”

She was clutching Henry close, as if the mere mention of James might result in her son being snatched away by the Devil. Ada was glad she had told James to stay home, and that he seemed to have listened. “No, not at first,” Ada said.

“When did you find out?”

“He was never a threat to your family, Sarah.”

“You don’t know that!” Mrs. Randall said, shrill. “You brought a heretic warmonger into my home and let him near my family—”

“Had a child with him,” Ada said. “A child he dotes on and adores. Watched him get between your son and a water-starved pede. He was never a threat to you, Sarah.”

Mrs. Randall trembled, and pulled Henry away. Henry looked back over his shoulder at Ada, raised his hand as if he was waving goodbye. Ada nodded, and drew in a breath. People didn’t speak to her much, as she made her way to the door. Like Reyes, they called her Mrs. Metzger now. With derision, with fear.

They seemed divided—either she had known early on, and was a heretic, or James had deceived her, and she was a victim. Ada wasn’t sure which she loathed more.

“Mrs. Metzger.” General Pierce appeared with a nod and slight bow. “I haven’t had the chance to speak with you since I heard you intend to go to the Settlement.”

Ada stopped to look at him, a grimace twisting her face. He hadn’t had the chance to speak to her because she had been actively avoiding him. “What is there to speak of?”

“It’s my duty to ensure that your journey is safe,” Pierce said, “but it is also of concern to me that the terms of your husband’s sanctuary are honored, by himself and others.”

“And?” Ada asked, annoyed.

“I intend to remain here, in Carlston,” Pierce said. “Lieutenant Stark will be accompanying you on your journey to the Settlement.”

“And Mr. Reyes?” Ada wanted to know exactly what that snake was doing, and where he was doing it.

Pierce hesitated at that. “Mr. Reyes also intends to return to the Settlement. He would prefer to do so separately from yourself, however his safety is also my responsibility, and I lack the men to spare for a second escort.”

Ada held back a milk-curdling scowl. If Reyes was with her, she supposed, at least he couldn’t cause trouble in Carlston. “I see. Have your superiors been alerted to my intentions?”

“They… have.” Pierce gazed at her. “The press, as you might imagine, is in an uproar.”

Ada’s first thought was of her mother. Her only remaining daughter’s name splashed across the news, and in that fashion. It was a miracle she hadn’t already called to bemoan her misfortune. “Well,” Ada said, giving Pierce a dry smile, “I always wanted to be famous.” 

#

Ruth was putting a new hem on an old dress when she heard the crash. She found Leah sitting on the floor of her room, a chair overturned, her hands shaking as she stared at her phone, pale as a moon.

“Leah? Leah, are you alright?”

Ruth reached for her, and Leah caught her forearm in an iron grip. She looked up, her eyes wild. “They found him.”

Ice crystals blossomed in Ruth’s blood. “What?”

“He—he—” Leah could barely speak, she shoved the phone at Ruth.

Ruth read the article, hardly able to understand what she was seeing. James alive, James having spent two years in a frontier town under a false name, James—married. Someone had found their wedding portrait, sat next to each other in their wedding clothes in front of a plain backdrop. They weren’t somber, exactly, but it wasn’t a joyful portrait. It was matter-of-fact.

The wife was young. Not unconscionably young, but at least fifteen years younger than James, which made her only a few years older than Josephine. Ada Carl, they said her name was, of Safe Harbor. Ada Metzger, now.

She was coming to the Settlement, to stand trial on her husband’s behalf. James had right of sanctuary, granted by Carlston’s only pastor. For the time being, he was safe.

“Oh my God,” Leah was whispering, over and over. “Oh my God.”

Ruth pulled her to her feet. “We have to reach out to her.”

Leah stared at her, uncomprehending for a moment. “The wife,” she said, making the connection.

“We’re the closest thing to friends she’ll have in this city,” Ruth said. They were family, even. Sisters-in-law—and how odd that thought was. “How do we contact her?” 

#

Mrs. Metzger—that’s what Micah was supposed to call her now, though it didn’t feel quite right—was in the nursery, in the rocking chair with Clairy. She spent a lot of time there, now, as if she could store up that time and use it while she was gone. Micah had come in and sat down and hadn’t said anything, and neither had Mrs. Metzger. She looked at him, nodded, and looked back to Clairy, who had fallen asleep with her head in the crook of her mother’s arm.

Micah hadn’t spoken to James in—over a week, now. It felt like longer. James slept in what was meant to be a guest room. Neither Mrs. Metzger nor Miss Webb had said anything to Micah about it, though he had heard Mrs. Metzger telling James that it served him right.

“Why are you going to the Settlement?” Micah asked.

Mrs. Metzger looked up, her hair loose over the shoulders of her nightdress. Under the rim of her glasses he could see purple half-moons under her eyes. “Be more specific.”

“Do you really think you can help him?”

She looked back at Clairy, smoothed her hair. “I think I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try.” Clairy was growing fast, bigger than most babies her age. “I think I’ve lost enough friends over the years to let go of another without a fight.”

Micah put his arms around his knees, looked at the window. The lamps glowed against the glass. “He told me it didn’t have anything to do with Reyes, not after the beginning.”

Mrs. Metzger didn’t say anything to that.

“I don’t know if I should believe him. Or if I should forgive him.”

“Are you asking me?” She looked up again. “I haven’t known him any longer than you have.”

“No, but… you know him differently than I do.” Micah leaned back against the wall. “He must tell you different things than he tells me.”

“What makes you say that?”

Micah shrugged. “You’re a landowner. I was born in a brothel.”

“I don’t think James bothers himself with the distinction.”

“Don’t you?” Micah looked at her. “Push comes to shove, you’re his wife. Mother of his child. I happened to be nearby and look like Reyes.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” She cocked her head to the side. “He loves you. He loves Clairy. On a good day, he likes me.”

Mrs. Metzger shrugged. “You don’t have to forgive James if you don’t want to. You don’t have to believe a damn thing he says. I can’t make you do either. If you want me to give you something clearcut, I can’t. He says it’s not about Reyes, well… I’ll give him this: anything you have in common with Reyes begins and ends at your face.” She shrugged. “Maybe that counts for something, I don’t know.”

Mrs. Metzger looked back at Clairy, stroked her cheek. “I won’t tell you what to do or think.”

Micah let out a breath. “I feel like an idiot.”

“Don’t. I will tell you that, don’t feel stupid for this.” She rose, gently put Clairy in her crib. Mrs. Metzger scrubbed over her face with both hands, and sighed. “Just remember none of us know how this will end.”

She meant that this could end with James’ death. That she might fail. That Micah needed to take that into consideration.

“Thank you,” he said, softly.

Mrs. Metzger turned, bent to hug him around the shoulders. The most they had ever done was pass Clairy to each other, and the sudden contact was surprising, but not unwanted. Micah leaned into the hug, his cheek on her shoulder. He sniffed, a sharp ache blossoming in his ribs. Mrs. Metzger pressed a kiss to the side of his head and squeezed his shoulder as she pulled back, giving him a sympathetic smile. “Goodnight, Mr. Deering.”

Micah sat in the nursery for a little while longer, watching Clairy sleep, before he pulled himself to his feet and switched off the lights. He made his way to the guest room, and found James knelt at the side of the bed, evidently praying. James looked up, and gazed at him.

Micah bit his lip. “I’m not a replacement for him, am I?”

“No.” James shook his head. “Never.”

Micah nodded, and let out a breath. “Come up to bed.” 

#

Josephine had looked at the wedding portrait a thousand times, since her mother had showed it to her. Somehow in her imaginings of him, her father had never aged. She always saw him young, shy, too aware of how much space he occupied. This man sat with his shoulders back, formal but not uncomfortable. He knew his place in the world. His hair was grey, his face sun-darkened, throwing into sharp relief the scars he had gained over the years.

And the wife—her step-mother, and that was a very odd thought—she was coming to the Settlement.

She had a stern face, and in that she made a handsome match for her husband. Josephine could imagine the pair of them, overseeing a little mining town, their very presence demanding respect. The wife would have to be that kind of woman, to have run a town like that for so many years by herself.

Her mother had tracked down Ada Metzger’s contact information, but it was her grandmother who called. Josephine watched from the door, her grandmother waiting for the video call to be answered. Her grandmother said she wanted to see the woman with her own eyes, to see her face when she heard her voice.

It was a man who answered, the steward, he said. Josephine kept out of sight as her grandmother told the steward her name, and watched his eyes flicker in surprise, and recognition. He didn’t hesitate, when she said she wanted to speak to Mrs. Metzger. “She’s just in her office, ma’am, I’ll fetch her right away.”

Mrs. Metzger, when she appeared, seemed wary. She was in a vest and shirtsleeves, and wore wire-rimmed glasses, which surprised Josephine. She looked very different from the woman in the portrait. “Mrs. Finnbar?”

For a moment, her grandmother seemed unable to say anything. “Mrs. Metzger,” she said at last, pressing her hand over her heart. “I wanted to offer you my hospitality, during your stay in the Settlement… and to ask you if your husband remembers me.”

“He must,” Mrs. Metzger said, “when I met him, he was calling himself James Finnbar.”

Josephine felt the pang in her own heart, at the way her grandmother went quiet. She left the room, unable to listen any further. He didn’t have the right to that name, not after all those years, after everything—

“She has agreed to come,” her grandmother said at dinner that night. “We will receive her, make her at home, and then,” her grandmother looked at her mother, at Ruth, “I wish to go to Carlston.”

“I’d like to go with you,” Josephine said.

Her mother looked at her as if she’d grown a new set of ears. “Jo?”

Josephine had thought a great deal about what she would do, if she ever saw her father face to face. What she would say to him. What she wanted him to know.

She wasn’t content to let her grandmother or her mother communicate about her childhood to him. She wanted to be there, when he learned he had a daughter. She wanted to see his face.

“You didn’t tell her about me, did you?” Josephine asked her grandmother.

“I did not. All I told her was that I would be visiting, likely with other family.” Her grandmother considered her carefully. “I thought it best we use our own discretion.”

“When do we leave?” Ruth asked.

“I thought a few weeks after Mrs. Metzer arrives,” her grandmother said, “to give her time to get settled.” Her grandmother paused, and said, “Mrs. Metzger told me that she was glad we would be in Carlston, to see her daughter, since she will be absent.”

Josephine stopped with her wine glass half-raised. Not once, since she had learned of Ada Metzger, had she considered that there might be a child.

A daughter. She had a half-sister. Another half-sister.

“Her name is Clara, I’ve been told.”

“She’s leaving her child in Carlston?” her mother asked.

“She said she was confident that James could better provide for the child in Carlston than she could in the Settlement.”

Josephine pushed back from the table and left, a hand at her temple. She went out to the garden, drawing in a deep breath of warm evening air. The oranges were ripe on the trees. She felt knocked off balance.

“May I hazard a guess as to what you’re feeling?”

Josephine glanced over her shoulder at Ruth, who stood just at the door. She shrugged, and looked away.

“Our circumstances were different,” Ruth said, “but I don’t think our reactions are. Not very much, anyway. You feel robbed, don’t you?”

Josephine didn’t answer.

“If I know Leah, if I’ve come to know Mrs. Finnbar, they told you only kind things about him. You were a child. Children take such things at their face, they idealize, they make heroes out of their parents. Then they grow older. They learn their parents have flaws. In your case… perhaps more than most.”

“Get to the point,” Josephine snapped.

“You felt betrayed that James wasn’t everything you had been told he was,” Ruth said. “Sin enough that he wasn’t there to be your father, but to fail your ideal of him? Unforgivable. And now he has another daughter, and a wife who trusts his devotion to that daughter enough to leave her in his care, and you feel that should have been yours.”

Josephine gritted her teeth together so as not to say something she would regret.

Ruth kept her distance, but she did come further into the garden. “At thirteen I became mother to all of my younger siblings. My father was grieving at the bottom of a bottle and there was no one else to care for them. And every girl my age who still went to school, every girl who still had her mother—I _hated_ them. What they had, it should have been mine.” She looked at Josephine. “Am I wrong?”

Josephine let out a slow breath. “No. And yes.” She folded her arms across her chest. “He’s going to be killed, and this new daughter, his second chance, is going to grow up just like I did.” Josephine smiled bitterly. “Only I have the luxury of not being tarred with his name.” 

#

James looked at Ada as if she had invoked the name of a ghost when she said she had spoken to Sarah Finnbar. “She reached out to you?”

Ada nodded, bouncing Clairy in her arms. It was a warm evening, they were on the porch, facing the river which had grown quiet and sluggish. Ada had had screens hung, to keep the insects at bay. “She said she suspected I would be short on friends… and that we’re family, of a sort. So she asked me if I wanted a place to stay, and I’d rather stay with her than in some boarding house.”

Family. She still considered them family. “Leah still lives with her?”

“She didn’t give me any names, she just said she wanted to see you, and would likely have other family with her.” Ada was restless, but the circles under her eyes had gotten darker. She left the house less. Preparing to leave, she said, but James suspected she was avoiding a town she no longer felt welcome in. He heard her pacing at late hours of the night, often as not.

“She was always kind,” James said, “the best person I ever knew. You would like her, I think.”

For a moment, Ada almost smiled. “I’m glad Clairy will have her for a grandmother, then.” She looked out the window, weariness evident on her face. “I should have chosen to leave sooner.”

James squeezed her shoulder, put a kiss in her hair. “I’ll never be able to repay you.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Ada leaned her shoulder into his. “It’s not about being repaid.”

For a moment they stood like that, listening to the sounds of the house. Ada sighed, rested her head on his shoulder. “I don’t know what we’re going to do, after all of this is over.”

“You’ll figure something out,” James said. “You always do.”

“You think Pierce actually gives a shit about your safety?”

James nodded. “Yes.” If nothing else, Pierce was a man of his word, and of the law. To his own detriment, perhaps. It would have been better for his career, to let something happen to James—but he wouldn’t. James knew it as surely as he knew the truth of the Resurrection.

“This place is slipping out between my fingers like sand,” Ada murmured. “Everything I’ve put into it, all the times I’ve nearly died for it, killed for it…”

“You don’t have to do this,” James said.

“Yes, I do.” Ada stepped away, and nodded at him. “I have to put Clairy down for the night. Get some rest.”

“You, too.”

Ada laughed softly, and nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

Micah was at the window when James went upstairs, looking up at the sky. Two moons hung nearly full from where they could see them. On some nights you could see all eight, and it was bright enough to walk about without a light. Micah glanced at him as he came to the window. James didn’t think he had been forgiven, not really, but at least Micah spoke to him, now. “Mrs. Hammond says Reyes came looking for you today.”

“I know.” James had told her to say that he was unwell. He had watched from the window as Aaron watched the house. “I didn’t speak to him.”

“What is it about him?” Micah asked. “He’s so—awful.”

James laughed softly. “He wasn’t always. Not to me, anyway. But that was a a different time.” He sat next to Micah at the window, clasped his hands together. “I wish I had a better reason to give you than just the number of years we spent together.” Aaron was part of who he was. James had given up on wishing that wasn’t true.

Micah looked out the window. “Is he the reason why you’re always so worried about upsetting me?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

James gazed at Micah’s face in profile, the moonlight casting him in silver. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Aaron was ferociously temperamental, and near impossible to read. Misjudging his mood or desire had seldom ended well.

There was quiet, for a moment, and Micah shifted. “You haven’t told me you loved me since I saw him.”

James felt a pang. “I thought that would seem… manipulative.”

Micah laughed, and shook his head. “I don’t understand you.”

James reached out, and grasped Micah’s hand. Micah looked at him, waiting. “You remind me what it feels like to want to be better,” James murmured. “To want to be worthy of someone. I’m sorry that I’ve failed you so much.”

Micah’s fingers slipped through his own, and Micah’s smile was soft, and sad. “Will you read something to me?”

James nodded, getting up to find a book. Ada complained that half her library was in their room, that James could at least only take a few at a time. Micah liked novels, the romance ones in particular, but—and this he had confessed in a moment’s frustration, when Ada had left him a list of tasks and Mrs. Hammond was out—he had never been taught to read. So James read to him, and Micah leaned against his shoulder and listened until his head drooped and he stretched out to sleep.

The nights had seemed horribly quiet without that ritual. He was glad to have it back. 

#

“My husband isn’t home, Mr. Reyes.” Mrs. Metzger sat behind her desk like the coldest of businessmen. She had let Deering bring Aaron as far as her office, and no further. The steward was lurking behind him at the office door, now, openly resentful of Aaron’s presence. “His illness has persisted, so I sent him to Dr. Boulos.”

“If it’s of such great concern, perhaps he ought to be sent to hospital.”

Mrs. Metzger smiled coolly. “By the grace of God, he will be fine.”

There was no illness, and she didn’t care whether or not Aaron believed there was. It was a lie she meant to keep telling, as long as it was useful to her.  

“I suppose that’s what a man gets when he strays into a whore’s sheets,” Aaron replied, glancing in Deering’s direction. It hadn’t taken much nosing around, to figure out where Deering had come from.

Deering didn’t blink. “You’d know, wouldn’t you, Mr. Reyes?”

“Gentlemen,” Mrs. Metzger said sternly, with a knuckle pressed to her temple. “If you would kindly pretend to be possessed of an ounce of civility.” She gazed steadily at Aaron. “If you have some business with my husband, then it will have to wait. I see no reason for you to continue wasting my time.”

Aaron smiled, settled deeper into the chair. “Aren’t I allowed to see an old friend?” The coward wouldn’t even face him.

Mrs. Metzger was unimpressed. “Your definition of ‘friend’ must be a strange one.” She sat back in her own chair, stretching from shoulders to fingers. There was a crucifix pin on her vest, gold with a ruddy stone at the center. Aaron wondered how sincere her faith was, how many heresies she kept close to her heart.

“So protective,” Aaron hummed. “Your daughter is lucky, to have a mother like you.”

The tense was subtle, but Aaron saw it nonetheless. A tightening of the jaw, the shoulders. “It’s time for you to leave, Mr. Reyes.”

Aaron smirked. Too easy. He could already taste blood. “Of course,” he said, rising. Mrs. Metzger rose with him. “I shan’t trouble you any longer. It will be a shame, when something happens to James and your daughter loses one of her protectors. What was her name again? Claire?”

Mrs. Metzger looked at Deering, who stepped to the side and opened the office door. Mrs. Metzger held out an arm, gesturing for Aaron to go ahead of her. Aaron wondered that her teeth didn’t crack from the tension in her jaw.

Aaron went to the door, Mrs. Metzger on his heels. She opened the front door, smiled tightly.  Aaron inclined his head to her, and stepped out the door.

“Mr. Reyes,” Mrs. Metzger said.

Aaron turned—and something flat and blunt slammed into his nose and teeth. He toppled back onto the porch, warm blood filling his mouth and stars burning behind his eyes. Mrs. Metzger crouched over him, planting the rifle stock by his head. With her other hand, she grabbed his collar and dragged his head up. “Make any implication toward my daughter again,” she said, her voice too quiet, too calm, “and it will be the other end of the rifle next time.”

She slammed his head back down, and his skull bounced. “Do I make myself clear, Mr. Reyes?”

Through the haze of pain, Aaron found it in himself to laugh. “Perfectly clear. I see why James likes you.”

Mrs. Metzger gazed at him for a moment, and stood. She took her rifle inside, and closed the door with a bang.

Aaron picked himself up, copper and iron in his mouth. He could feel the blood dripping from his chin. She had a vicious hit, that woman. God only knew what her girl would grow up to be, with those parents.

“What the hell happened to you?” Stark asked when Aaron walked into the tavern, blood drying on his face.

“I spoke with Mrs. Metzger. She found my company disagreeable.” Aaron grinned, called for a bottle of wine to be sent to his room, and went upstairs to wash up.

#

“You knew they’d found him, didn’t you?” Leah was gazing at her, and Miriam couldn’t read her face.

They were in Miriam’s quarters, stretched out side by side on her sofa. How long had it been, Miriam wondered, since she was able to enjoy that simple contact with someone who wasn’t one of her children?

Miriam nodded. “Samuel told me. I wanted to tell you, but… he wasn’t even supposed to tell me.”

Leah nodded, laid her head back to gaze at the ceiling. “His wife will be staying with us. I don’t know what to think of her. I never imagined he’d marry, not after all that.”

Miriam touched her forehead to Leah’s head. “I always thought he would have been a good husband. Not a happy one, maybe, but a good one.”

Leah laughed softly. “He was always so ready to be miserable to make someone else happy.” She turned her head to look at Miriam, her hazel eyes as bright as ever. “Are you happy, Miri?”

Miriam gazed back at her. “I’ve had a good life.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Miriam shifted, felt Leah’s hand clasp her own. “I was happy when my children were born,” she said. “I was happy raising them.” She looked at Leah. “I’m happy when I’m with you.”

Leah went pink in the cheeks, and smiled. She laughed a little. “Look at me. You’d think I was a schoolgirl again.” She touched Miriam’s face, drawing her thumb across the cheek. Her fingers were calloused, from all those years of charity work. “You don’t have to stay here,” Leah said, soft. “There’s always room in my mother’s house.”

Miriam remembered when Leah had always stiffly referred to her as “Mrs. Finnbar,” and eventually “Sarah.” It wasn’t until Josephine was three or four that Leah had taken to calling Mrs. Finnbar her mother.

“I know,” Miriam murmured, “but I can’t. Not yet.”

Leah nodded. “I understand.”

#

Ester helped her button into her traveling dress, taking her time. It had had to be refitted, Ada was no longer the slim teenager that had run away from home.

In that dress, with a proper ladies’ hat on her head, Ada thought she looked like someone her mother would have been proud of. She lifted her chin, applied a touch of color to her lips and cheeks. She sighed at her reflection.

Clairy was beginning to crawl on her own. Ada might be gone for months. Depending on how long the trial dragged out, maybe a year. Maybe two.

Ester put a hand on her back, kissing her temple. “You’ll call often?”

“I can’t promise you it won’t be every night.” Ada pushed back from the vanity, pulling her eyes away from the mirror. “I’ll need to hear your voice. And know how Clairy’s doing.”

Everyone else was downstairs, waiting for her. Ada took Clairy from Micah’s arms, kissing her and holding her close for a moment. “I love you,” she whispered against the top of Clairy’s head. “I’ll be home soon.”

James looked at her, looked at her dress, and let out a sigh that said he wished she wouldn’t do this. Ada smiled, and kissed his cheek when he bent to hug her. “Take care of yourself,” she said.

“Same for you.”

Mrs. Hammond looked anxious, and squeezed Ada’s hands. “Please be careful, Missus.”

Corbley and Hanasut said very little, but flanked Ada as she went to the door. “You gonna be alright?” Corbley asked.

Ada looked at him, and nodded.

Stark waited beside the car, barely managing to conceal a dour mood. There was a small audience of town’s folk along the street. Ada straightened her shoulders, lifted her bags. Stark came to meet her, taking her luggage to load it into the car. Corbley opened the car door, and Hanasut got in first, so that Ada could sit between them.

Reyes was sat in the back as well, with one of the Bishop’s Men. He had a magnificent smear of purple across the middle of his face, yellow at the edges. Ada felt a little smug, seeing it. “Good morning, Mr. Reyes.”

He nodded, gave a small smile that evidently pained him. “Mrs. Metzger. Your husband is recovered of his illness, I trust?”

Ada smiled coolly. “He is. I appreciate your concern.”

Stark returned to the car, in the passenger seat. Another soldier was driving.

Ada told herself she ought not look out the window as they drove through the town, but she couldn’t help herself. She looked out at the faces, took in the stares. She drew in a breath and looked across at Reyes, who was watching her. “Have you ever been to the Settlement, Mrs. Metzger?”

“Once.” Ada clasped her hands together to keep them still.

“And how did you find it?”

Ada gazed back at him. “Crowded.”

They drew many eyes in Mallory. Corbley and Hanasut were a reassuring presence at Ada’s side, too intimidating for anyone to get any ideas.

Stark commandeered an entire train car, saying that it would be easier to ensure their safety. Ada wrote to her mother, reassuring her that she was well, and being looked after, and when she had finished that, she tried to read, but her concentration was shattered, so instead she paged through her pictures for hours, and watched the countryside rumble by.

Ada slept uneasily, leaned into Corbley’s side, and woke in the early hours of dawn. Reyes was awake, too, nursing a cup of coffee. He made eye contact with Ada, and looked away out the window.

The soldiers took sleeping shifts, keeping an eye on Ada. She understood—she was a prisoner, as much as anything else.

To pass the time, Corbley told her stories about his home. Hanasut had a few stories to share as well, though she was more reticent. Ada listened intently to tales of Kelchak politics, with implications she didn’t entirely understand. Little things about Kelchak life that were interesting to her, their technology, why they were so fascinated with the other species they encountered.

He talked a lot about childrearing, which Ada supposed was on his mind. It was on her mind, too.

“I’ll miss you terribly,” Ada murmured. She didn’t know what she would do without him.

“I’ll miss ya too,” Corbley said. “Maybe I’ll come back, when they’re grown.”

Ada wouldn’t count on it. It would be years, he’d be back among his own culture and kin, with a family that should have been impossible for him—who wouldn’t stay?

In the evening, as everything quieted down, Ada took her phone and pressed herself into a quiet corner of the car, calling home. Ester’s voice on the other end put an ache in her chest that Ada had to fight to keep from her voice. Ester would let Clairy babble into the phone, and Ada closed her eyes and murmured back, an old loneliness sinking its teeth into her bones.

Reyes got up from his seat when she lowered the phone, and pulled a small package from his pocket, holding it out to her. Ada looked at the paper-wrapped square, and looked back to Reyes. “What is this?”

“I thought you might be hungry.” Reyes face gave nothing away. “Or at least that you might benefit from something sweet.”

Hesitantly, Ada took the package, and Reyes went back to his seat, looking at a screen in his hand.

It was a pair of small oat cakes, with a lemon glaze on the top. Ada nibbled on one, watching Reyes, but he didn’t look back at her.

The journey took several days, each more miserable than the last, until Ada was even a little relieved to see the Settlement come into view, a sprawl of metal and concrete that glimmered under the sun.

Reyes seemed eager to be rid of them all, having all his bags before the train began to slow, and bidding Ada goodbye with a flourish and a smirk, leaping off the train the moment it stopped.

Stark kept an eye on Ada, and said he would make sure she was safely delivered to the Finnbar household. Corbley helped her gather up her things while Hanasut stepped down onto the platform, watching the crowd, who watched her back. Kelchak were an uncommon sight, this deep in the Covenant.

“Ma’am,” Hanasut said as Ada stepped down.

She nodded toward a woman approaching them, dressed in deep blue and a broad white sun hat, adorned with lace. She was a tall woman, with an oddly familiar face. “Mrs. Metzger?” the woman asked.

“Yes?” Ada said, aware of Stark and the pair of soldiers behind her.

The woman extended her hand, and her mouth curved into an eerily familiar grimace. “My name is Josephine Finnbar. You’re married to my father.”


	23. Tempest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _“Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. Then they cried out to the Lord, ‘Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.’ So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging.”_  
>  Jonah 1:13-15

The sun was bright and the air around the Reyes house was sweet with the smell of fruit trees. Aaron sent his bags up with a houseman and took himself to Hosanna’s sitting room, with a bottle of whiskey he had picked up along the way.

Aaron greeted his mother with a kiss and a smile. Hosanna raised a brow, studied his face. “You’ve come back.”

“I have,” Aaron said, moving about the room to pour himself a celebratory drink. His back was turned to his mother, but he could sense her disapproving frown all the same. 

“When I heard that Metzger was given sanctuary, I expected you would remain there.” Hosanna closed the book she had been reading, rising to her feet. “But here you stand before me.”

Aaron raised a glass to her. “I could hardly miss the trial, even if it is the wife rather than the man.” Aaron had busied himself for days, pondering how Mrs. Metzger might try to defend James.

His mother’s eyes narrowed, only slightly. She was trying to work out his motive. Aaron felt a little glee—for once, he had puzzled her.

“You mean to interfere.”

“Would you like a drink, Mother?”

She ignored his offer, as Aaron had expected she would. “To what end?”

Aaron gave her an open-handed shrug and a smile. He meant to keep that to himself, for now. That irritated her, he could see it in the slight pull at the corners of her mouth. “Aaron.”

“She’s quite an interesting woman,” Aaron said, “she runs around her town and Mallory in men’s clothes, but then when it came time to come here—perfectly ladylike in her dress and sun hat. Her performance in court will be admirable, I’m sure.”

“Does she have allies?” Hosanna asked.

“She’s only been to the Settlement once. Her family are merchants from Safe Harbor, haven’t been well connected since her grandfather passed. Her father may have made some connections before his unfortunate death, but I doubt she’ll make use of them. Too proud.” Aaron sipped his drink, and sat. “I’m given to understand that she’s staying with Sarah Finnbar. Terribly soft-hearted old woman, still considers James her son.”

“Don’t underestimate Mrs. Finnbar,” Hosanna said, sitting across from him. “Most may have forgotten what she once was, but I have not.”

Aaron looked at her curiously. “What’s that, exactly?”

His mother smiled dryly, having gained the upper hand once more. “Tell me what you mean to do, and I will tell you what I know about Sarah Finnbar.”

#

All of the women in the Finnbar house were watching Ada. She stood in the entry hall, looking around so that she didn’t have to meet their eyes.

Ada had walked into something she had not prepared for, something she lacked the knowledge to understand, and now she stood before three more women, all trying to learn something about her from her face, her clothes.

She knew without asking that two of them were James’ sisters. They looked too much like him to be anything else. She wondered, looking between them and Josephine, if Clairy would grow up to look that much like him.

“Mrs. Metzger?” the elder sister asked, stepping toward her.

“Ada, please,” she said, extending her hand. She was surprised to be met with a grip as strong as her own, and hands that were obviously used to hard work.

“My name is Ruth,” the woman said, giving an anxious smile. She was tall, and looked as though she had once had the strength to match it. “Ruth Price.”

Ada laughed softly, smiled. “My daughter is named after you. Clara Ruth.”

Ruth’s eyes widened a moment, and she brought her hand to her mouth in shock. Ada turned to the other sister. “You must be Leah,” she said, “James asked after you.”

Leah clasped her hand, let out a breath as she smiled. She was a little shorter than her sister, but still quite a bit taller than Ada, and had more weight in her face and about her middle.“I’m so glad to meet you.”

It was the small older woman that made Ada most anxious, even smaller than she had seemed on camera. Mrs. Finnbar smiled softly at Ada, put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m glad to meet you, too. I wish we could have met under better circumstances.”

Ada felt strangely safe, with Mrs. Finnbar’s hand on her shoulder. Privately, she thanked God that they had given her a place to stay.

They gave her time to get settled, unpacking her clothes and the few other things she had brought. The house was quiet, but in a peaceful way. James said he had only lived there a couple of years, and Ada had thought that was strange, that it would have impacted him so much—but meeting Mrs. Finnbar, she thought she understood a little better.

Corbley and Hanasut took a room nearby, and Corbley came to help her unpack. Or rather, he came to sit on her bed and watch her while she unpacked. “What d’you think?” he asked her.

Ada looked over her shoulder as she hung her dresses in the wardrobe. “What do you mean?”

“They all seem t’want somethin’ from ya.”

Ada shrugged. “I think they want me to tell them if James is what they remember him to be.” She shook the wrinkles from the skirts. “They’re just curious what kind of person I am. Wouldn’t you be?”

“Everybody in th’ whole damn Covenant wants to know what kinda person you are.” Corbley’s spines clicked together, his eyes shifted. “Y’know, when I asked ya what you were gonna do if this all went to Hell, this wasn’t what I had in mind.”

Ada laughed, shook her head. “Only God knew where this was going.” She closed the wardrobe, and let out a breath. “I never asked James how much his sisters knew.” She didn’t have the slightest idea what assumptions they might have made about her marriage, about her relationship to James. What questions they might ask.

There was a soft knock on her door. Corbley rose to open it, and Ada watched Ruth flinch back in surprise. “Sorry,” she said, “I was expecting Mrs. Metzger.”

“Mrs. Price,” Ada said, “what can I do for you?”

“Oh, Ruth, please—we’re kin, after all.” Ruth smiled a little hesitantly.

“If you’ll give us a moment, Mr. Corbley,” Ada said. Corbley shrugged and left her, inclining his head to Ruth before he ducked out the door.

Ruth clasped her hands anxiously. “I’m sorry to intrude, I just… couldn’t wait until dinner.”

“It’s not a bother at all, I appreciate the company.” Ada closed up her empty bag, sliding it under the bed.

“I only—” Ruth was trying to gauge something from her face. “I wanted to know how much you know about my brother. I worry about him a great deal, but—you, as well, now.”

Ada gazed at her for a long moment. “Are you afraid I married him not knowing what I was getting into?”

“Perhaps.”

Ada had never much liked speaking in vague statements, but she supposed she would have to get used to it. “I knew about Reyes, if that answers your question.”

Ruth nodded very slowly, and let out a breath. “I see. I feared… he might have withheld that from you.”

Ada laughed softly. “We have… a mutual understanding.”

Ruth looked at her curiously. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Would you have told me about him, if I hadn’t known?” Ada asked.

“No.” Ruth shook her head. “It’s his to tell. I wouldn’t take that from him.”

Ada nodded. “Thank you.  Then you understand when I tell you that he knows what I am, too.”

A moment of understanding lit across Ruth’s face. “Ah.” She frowned for a moment. “But—your daughter—”

“Is a beautiful child, let me find a picture for you,” Ada said, certainly not eager to discuss that facet of her marriage.

Ruth put a hand to her mouth, smiling, when she saw. Ada had found a picture of James rocking her to sleep, totally unaware that he was being observed. “Christ and all His blessings,” Ruth murmured. “What a sweet girl.”

“We’ll see if you still feel that way after you get to hear her scream,” Ada said, smiling. “The lungs on that child—must get that from me.”

“I don’t know,” Ruth said, “All my younger siblings were quite accomplished wailers.” She stepped back. “I should give you time to rest. I expect that you’ll need it.” She paused at the door, and looked at Ada. “You and James… are you happy?”

Ada considered her answer. “We were,” she said, “but now—I think we’re only afraid.”

Ruth nodded. “I hope, then, that you can be happy again.” 

#

Josephine tried to be fair to Mrs. Metzger, tried to keep her own feelings from clouding her impression of the woman. She listened without saying anything as the others asked Mrs. Metzger about Carlston, about her daughter, about her husband. She looked at the pictures of her half-sister, all black hair and round cheeks, and tried to keep from feeling.

Mrs. Metzger never faltered, but she was uncomfortable. She fussed at her dress like a young girl in her freshly starched Sunday best, and fidgeted with the silver. She declined any wine, though she seemed less than content with the chilled orange juice she took in its place. Always, she gave off the undercurrent of nervous energy.

When Josephine had introduced herself, Mrs. Metzger had not questioned her at all. She had looked stunned for a moment, but she didn’t ask who Josephine’s mother was, or why her husband had not told her. All she said was, “I’m glad to meet you, Miss Finnbar.”

It had been difficult to get rid of Stark, but Mrs. Metzger and her two Kelchak companions had been a great help. They took her grandmother’s car, and hardly spoke to each other except about meaningless things—the organization of the city, it’s traffic, the weather.

“Please don’t tell my father about me.”

Mrs. Metzger looked at Josephine with a puzzled face.

“He doesn’t know that I exist,” Josephine said, “and when I meet him, I want him to hear it from me.”

“I won’t say anything.” Mrs. Metzger gazed at her a moment longer, and then looked out the window. “I feel like it’s changed so much since I first saw it,” she said, more to herself than to Josephine, “maybe I just don’t remember it well. I only stayed long enough to purchase land.”

Josephine said nothing to that, and Mrs. Metzger looked at her again. “I’m sorry for staring,” she said, when Josephine met her gaze. “It’s only—you look so much like him.”

Josephine looked away, a grimace twisting her face.

“I’ve offended you,” Mrs. Metzger guessed.

Josephine tried to find the most diplomatic way to respond. “My feelings on my father are… complicated.”

“I understand.” Mrs. Metzger fell back against her seat. “I was relieved, when my father passed.”

That wasn’t the response Josephine had expected to hear. “I don’t know if I should give you my condolences or not.”

A small smile crossed Mrs. Metzger’s face. “If anything, you might give me congratulations, but it would grieve my mother, to hear me say that.” She looked at Josephine. “I suppose she’s grieved enough, having learned a little more about my choice in husbands.”

Josephine couldn’t help her laugh. “You aren’t grieved by it?”

“Oh, he grieves me plenty—but I’d take him over nearly any other man in the Covenant. I take it you aren’t married?”

“I have no taste for marriage.”

“If I’m being honest with you, neither do I.” Mrs. Metzger shrugged her shoulders. “But I couldn’t lose Carlston.”

“That’s all it was?” Josephine asked, surprised. She had expected—if the woman was willing to ruin her name defending him—that it must be a great deal more than that.

“You can’t expect me to believe that you wanted to hear about a sweeping romance,” Mrs. Metzger said, with a dry smile. “Stories like that won’t convince the courts of anything, so I don’t see why I should practice them on you.”

That bluntness, too, surprised Josephine. She supposed that she had expected a woman more like Miriam Pierce, the kind of wife that might float easily among society, elegant and soft-spoken. The kind of woman she knew her father had been drawn to in the past.

One of the Kelchak cleared their throat, and muttered, “You ought not be talkin’ too much about the trial.”

Mrs. Metzger sighed in an irritated way, but didn’t argue. She fussed at her purse, watching the street.

“Do you have an attorney yet, Mrs. Metzger?” Josephine asked.

“I’ve been trying to find one,” Mrs. Metzger said, “but, as you might imagine, no one is terribly eager to help me. All afraid of being condemned right along with me, I suppose.”

“I know someone,” Josephine said, “I’ll take you to him tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Metzger said, and smiled. “That would be a great help.” 

#

James avoided leaving the house after Ada left, but he made an exception for church. He didn’t particularly want to be there, and he was very much unwelcome, but he went anyway, and sat beside Ester with Clairy in his lap, not looking at anyone except Pastor Richards, who avoided making eye contact with him.

Evidently, Richards hadn’t expected he would attend. The sermon was about Jonah. Specifically, about repentance. “When we think of repentance,” he said, avoiding James’ stare, “we must not think only of our own souls, but of the example we leave for our children.”

The service ended, and James rose with Clairy in his arms, and left without speaking to anyone.

“Metzger.”

He paused, and looked over his shoulder at Pierce. “General.”

They stood under the shade of the steps, the few people who passed by openly staring. “I haven’t seen much of you,” Pierce said, as if they were friends.

“I thought it was prudent to make myself scarce,” James replied.

Pierce nodded, and looked at Clairy, trying to smile at her. Clairy hid her face in James’ shirt, going quiet. “I haven’t had the chance to meet your daughter.”

“Apologies that it wasn’t my priority to introduce you.” James noticed Micah at the rail, watching them. “May I go, General, or is there something that you wanted?” He didn’t like to linger in the open. Pierce’s protection or not, he was only one man, and there was an entire town that had good reason to want James gone.

The people he suspected or knew had once been heretics had grown skittish, since the Bishop’s Men arrived. They kept their heads down, didn’t start any trouble. James had brought soldiers into their haven, and whatever they had felt about him before, they weren’t likely to forgive him for that.

Pierce winced. “I’ve… often wondered why you didn’t kill me, when you had the chance.”

James gazed back at him for a moment. They had both had plenty of opportunities to put an end to the war years before Aaron took care of that. “I could ask you the same question.”

Pierce shrugged, smiled a little. “I asked first.”

James glanced at his arm. “Did you suffer much?” He had heard that Pierce had been hospitalized until after the end of the war. He remembered being relieved that he had lived.

“My career, and my pride, more so than anything else.” Pierce touched his arm, a ghost of pain on his face. “I’ll never see combat again.”

“I’d think that was a blessing.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Pierce glanced up, and noticed Micah. Micah’s face was blank, his posture casual, but it seemed to unnerve Pierce. “Apologies for keeping you,” he said to James. “But I would like to talk, if you would give me the time.”

James was reminded, oddly, of the times they had seen each other in combat, scrapes with death at each other’s hands. He was reminded of the fights, the really ugly fights. He imagined most of the old injuries that pained him most he’d won in fights against Pierce. He let out a breath. “Tuesday afternoon,” he said, “I’ll have Mrs. Hammond make coffee.”

Pierce almost smiled, and nodded. “I’ll see you then.” He gave a nod of acknowledgment to Micah, who’s expressionless demeanor had given way to a faint frown, and went off as if for a stroll.

“What does he want with you?” Micah asked, coming down the steps.

James watched Pierce’s back retreating down the street. “To make sense of things, I imagine.”

Micah looked like he wanted to ask what things. “Funny how he doesn’t dare approach you until your wife is gone.”

“Ada has that effect on people.” James lifted Clairy a little higher, kissed the top of her head. “Let’s go home. I can feel myself cooking from the outside in.”

“James,” Micah said, when they were a distance away. “Why did you come out to church?”

James watched the river, growing lower with each passing day. “If I hadn’t, they would have called all my previous attendances a pretense, and my absence would be further evidence of my irredeemable heresy.”

“And what does going prove?” Micah asked.

James looked at him. “That I won’t be made a coward.”

Micah was quiet for a moment. “I wish,” he said, softly, “I wish that I was… more sure that you won’t try to get yourself killed.”

James shifted Clairy in his arms. “I don’t want to die,” he said quietly, “not really. I only—if I could atone, for the things I’ve done, I’d like to die doing that. I’d like it to count for something.”

“Seems to me,” Micah replied, “you could do a lot more atoning if you lived.”

#

Ester never liked when Ada left. They had only been apart a few times since they settled in Carlston, but it always left her unsettled. She slept poorly, she worried.

She was not alone in her worries, but she couldn’t fully share them. Ada had asked her not to tell anyone, and so Ester did not, but it weighed on her. Ada, alone, and the stress of that, along with the trial—Ester feared for her. Corbley would do what he could, but the Settlement was different. He did not command respect there.

Every night, she heard Ada’s voice, but it did little to ease her. She sounded weary, so relieved to hear Ester. “How are you?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” Ester said, pacing in their room, “how are you?”

“Oh, I’ve had a lively day,” Ada said, “first, I spent the morning with my new attorney, Mr. Yu. He’s young, but not inexperienced, and I’m nearly certain that he agreed to help because he’s enchanted with Miss Finnbar the Elder. He speaks about a lot of technicalities I don’t understand and it’s maddening.

“He’s decided the obvious, which is that the best we can hope for is an avoidance of execution. He wanted to ask instead for excommunication, since it’s more likely that Christ will return tomorrow than that James would repent. Then we argued over whether or not excommunication was an acceptable strategy, since that would nullify his sanctuary, and now we’ve agreed instead that we’ll pursue instead lifelong service. James would help build a church in Carlston, and then serve as its groundskeeper, and he could never leave Carlston.”

“That’s…”

“I know.” Ada’s sigh crackled slightly over the phone. “After that I made use of one of Mrs. Finnbar’s cars and went to a hospital for an examination. I’m told I’m in good health. When I told them my name, though—it seems my reputation has preceded me.”

“No one mistreated you, did they?” Ester caught sight of her own reflection in the mirror, saw the exhaustion on her own face.

“Not in anyway I could prove or seek recompense for. It certainly wasn’t a warm reception. I’m fine, Ester, really.” She was quiet, and then, “How’s Clairy?”

“She just went down for the evening. She’s got a bit of a cold, but I think it’s passing.”

“Good, good.” Ada sighed. “Is he there? I’d like to talk to him.”

“I’ll go get him.” She wished Ada would tell him, that Ester didn’t have to bear the secret. When it became evident, the press would descend upon the fact, and James would learn that way, and it would be cruel. She had told Ada as much, but still, Ada didn’t tell him.

They spoke for a long time, and Ester went to the kitchen for water, and something to soothe her nerves.

Mrs. Hammond glanced at her when she came in, and cut short the conversation she had been having with Micah over dishes, shooing him away. “Miss Webb,” she said, drying her hands on a towel. “I went up to put away the laundry today, and… well, I don’t mean to pry, but I noticed that there weren’t any dresses in Mrs. Metzger’s half of the wardrobe any longer.”

“She took them with her,” Ester said, “I thought you knew that.”

“Even the ones,” Mrs. Hammond said carefully, “that you made for her to wear while she was pregnant with little Clairy.”

Ester’s fingers tightened around the glass. “She wishes to keep it secret, for now.”

“But Mr. Metzger—”

“He doesn’t know,” Ester said, “and Ada does not want him to know.”

“She doesn’t want me to know what?”

Ester dropped the glass in the sink, where it broke. She cursed, bringing a hand to her mouth, and looked across at James, standing in the door with a startled expression on his face. “What is it?” he asked. “What don’t I know?”

Ester balled up her hands. She was angry at Ada, for asking her to keep the secret, angry at her for delaying what was inevitable. “Ada is pregnant,” Ester said. “She knew, before she left.” She gave James a bitter look. “If my math is right, she would have gotten that way not very long after you left for her father’s funeral.”

It was irresponsible, frankly, so soon after Clairy—but Ada felt her youth slipping away, the pressure for a woman of her age to make up for lost time, even though the speed with which Clairy had been conceived should have eased her fears, and Ester knew that James was far too soft-hearted to ever tell her no. He wanted another child as much as she did.

James stood for a moment as if he’d been slapped. “How long have you known?”

“Since she did.” It had been the same with Clairy. Ada told Ester, before anyone else.

James turned and started for the door. Ester chased after him. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To tell General Pierce to bring my wife home,” he said, furious, “because I’ll go to the Settlement to stand my own goddamn trial.”

“Absolutely not!” Ester said, forcing her way between him and the door. She had never been particularly tall or strong, but she was tall and strong enough. “This is exactly why Ada didn’t want you to know!”

“If I had known, I never would have let her go,” James snapped.

“It’s not your decision to make!” Ester snarled back.

“I think I’ve done enough of letting other people do the work for me,” James said, and started to pull her aside, so Ester threw a punch.

It was surprise, more than anything else, that sent James reeling, so Ester planted herself in front of the door, picking up Ada’s rifle and snapping it to her shoulder. “You think I was happy to let her go for your sake?” she demanded. “You think I give a good goddamn about what happens to you if the alternative is that Ada is in danger?”

Ester’s hands were shaking and she was so, so angry. “The only reason I’ll shoot you in the leg to keep you here, if I have to, is because I know what you mean to her. She’s given you her help and I won’t let you sling it back in her face.”

James put a hand to his jaw, let out a breath. He looked at her with something approaching grudging respect. “You would have been dangerous, if you’d ever fought in the ring.”

Ester didn’t budge, the rifle still pointed at him. She hadn’t fired it in a good long while, but she had never been a terrible shot. “I’m not moving until I know you won’t do something stupid.”

Micah came down the hall, and took James by the arm. “Come have a drink. You can talk to Mrs. Metzger about it tomorrow.” Micah pulled him away, glancing back at Ester over his shoulder, and she lowered the rifle, the shake coming back into her hands.

The balance they had struck in this house—the strange little family they had created—without Ada it was all unsettled, and no one quite knew what to do.

Ester leaned back against the door, trying to catch her breath. It felt like the world was coming apart at the seams, and there was nothing she could do but watch. 

#

Miriam didn’t quite know what to make of Ada Metzger. They spoke only briefly, a cordial exchange after Leah’s introduction, and then she was off to a private meeting with her attorney, as they prepared for the trial.

No dress or rouge could undo the obvious marks of sunlight, or the faint scars that showed on her face and hands. The high collar of her dress was excessively modest, and Miriam was given to wonder why.

Even her manner, though perfectly polite, had a roughness to it. She seemed like a woman who had grown unaccustomed to the niceties of society.

Miriam would not see her again until lunch, when she emerged looking worn and weary, massaging her temples. That was the first time Miriam saw the Kelchak, looming reptiles that muttered quietly to each other. She had never seen Kelchak in the flesh, never realized how big they could be.

“Stop mothering me,” Mrs. Metzger said sharply to the smaller of the pair, her voice rising. “I know I need more rest but if it were as simple as that—” She noticed Miriam, and stopped. “Mrs. Pierce,” she said, offering a polite nod. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

Miriam smiled at her, nodded. “Will you be eating supper with the rest of us?”

Mrs. Metzger considered for a moment, and nodded. “Are you close with the Finnbars, Mrs. Pierce?” she asked as they made their way to the dining room.

Miriam wasn’t sure if she imagined the note of suspicion in Mrs. Metzger’s voice. “I’ve been friends with Leah since we were young,” she said. “I’ve only recently had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with Mrs. Price.”

The Kelchak watched Miriam carefully, as if she might be a threat. It unsettled her, those slow-blinking yellow eyes.

“I was wondering if I might ask after your husband,” Miriam said. “It has been… a very long time, but we were friends, once.”

This time, Miriam was sure she saw skepticism on Mrs. Metzger’s face. “He’s with his daughter.”

Miriam felt her heart skip, before she realized Mrs. Metzger must mean her own child. So he had another, then. “Is she quite young?”

“Not yet a year old.” Mrs. Metzger clasped her hands tightly together. “I’ve never been away from her for more than a few hours.”

“At least,” Miriam said carefully, “it will make seeing her again all the more meaningful.” She remembered the day Leah had taken Josephine home, how Miriam had gone home, locked herself in her rooms and wept until she had no more tears to give.

Mrs. Metzger gave her an odd look. “I suppose so.” She let out a breath. “The trial begins in a week. I’ve noticed there are a lot of people outside Mrs. Finnbar’s gates, these days.”

Miriam had noticed, too. She had been let in through a staff gate, just to avoid the crowd that was trying to catch a glimpse of Mrs. Metzger. “Does it worry you?”

Mrs. Metzger shrugged. “I’m told I’ll have an escort.” Still, a line of worry was set between her brows.

The doors of the dining room were open, and Miriam’s only warning was a flash of familiar deep blue.

Josephine extended her hand, ignoring Miriam entirely. “Mrs. Metzger,” she said, “your mother is here.”

Mrs. Metzger stiffened visibly, and Miriam looked beyond Josephine to see a woman who looked a great deal like Mrs. Metzger, only older and with a bit more weight. She rushed forward, past Josephine. “Ada,” the woman said, putting her hands on Mrs. Metzger’s cheeks. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

Mrs. Metzger’s voice was as hard as granite. “What are you doing here?”

“Where’s Clara?” Mrs. Carl asked.

“At home,” Mrs. Metzger said, “with her father.” Mrs. Metzger’s face was nearly scarlet. “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Pierce, Miss Finnbar—I need a few moments alone with my mother.” She took her mother roughly by the arm and pulled her down the corridor, Kelchak attendants in tow.

“That was… unexpected,” Miriam said.

Josephine, too, seemed surprised. “I thought Mrs. Metzger must have asked her to come.”

#

The apoplectic scarlet of Ada’s face echoed her father’s rages, and it unnerved Susanna to see it. “What the hell are you doing here?” Ada hissed the moment they were behind closed doors, her Kelchak bodyguards outside.

“You left Clara with—with—”

“With her father,” Ada repeated, “and with Ester. She’s safer with them than with me.”

“How can you leave her with that man?” Susanna asked. Everything that was known about Metzger, and still Ada insisted on defending him, at the expense of her own already perilous reputation.

“Why are you here?” Ada exploded, nearly shouting.

“To urge you to divorce your husband,” Susanna said.

Ada took a step back, as if she had been slapped. The red vanished from her face, and her voice went frighteningly soft. “To do _what?”_

“The courts would grant it to you in an instant,” Susanna told her. “You married him under false pretenses, he lied to you about who he was—no one would blame you.”

“Mother—”

“You cannot throw your life away for him, Ada,” Susanna said, her voice shaking. “Please, for Clara’s sake.”

Ada put a hand to her mouth, and seemed to be holding back a shout. She turned, and paced three times across the middle of the room before she looked at Susanna again. “It’s for Clairy’s sake that I’m doing this. She deserves a father that would never dream of saying so much as an unkind word to her.”

Always, always with her hatred of her father. Wasn’t it enough that she had lost Nathan? “Hasn’t he done enough damage?” Susanna asked. “To bring your daughter up with his legacy—”

“It’s not your choice to make!” Ada snapped. “She’s my daughter, it’s my family, and you don’t know anything about it!”

“She’s my granddaughter,” Susanna said. “Ada, you and Clara are the only kin I have left.”

“Should have thought of that before you directed Pierce and Reyes my way, shouldn’t you?” Ada asked coldly.

Susanna felt that barb sink deep into her heart. “Ada, I never meant—”

“It doesn’t matter what you meant to do!” Ada cried, her voice rising again. “You’re trying to rob my daughter of a father that loves her, and you’re trying to rob me of one of the only friends I’ve had since I left Safe Harbor!”

Something clicked behind Ada’s eyes, and Susanna saw that calculating, cruel edge in her daughter’s face. “If I lose him,” Ada said, “you’re never seeing either me or Clairy ever again.”

Susanna stared at her. Who was this cold creature wearing her daughter’s face?

“You’ve done more than enough harm,” Ada said. “Every turn, just when things are going my way you have found a way to poison the well. Enough.” She let out a breath, put her shoulders back. “You will not make things worse for me now.”

Susanna felt unmoored, adrift. “Addy,” she whispered. She hadn’t called Ada that since she was a little girl.

Ada lifted her chin, laid a protective hand across her middle, and that was when Susanna knew. “You may stay, if Mrs. Finnbar will have you. But you will not interfere, and you will not speak of divorce, and you will not second-guess me.”

“You’re pregnant.”

Ada’s mouth twisted. “Yes. Would you orphan your next grandchild, too? Who knows, this one might even be the son that Father always wanted.”

Susanna closed her eyes, letting out a shaky breath. “Just once and for all, tell me true,” she said, “did you have the chance to save your father?”

“No,” Ada said shortly. “One minute he was there, and the next, he was gone. But if I had had the chance,” Ada said, “I can’t promise you that I would have done anything.”

The silence weighed on Susanna’s chest like all the brick in the Covenant. “You don’t mean that.”

Ada let out a sound that she only made when she was angry and trying not to cry. “I think you should go, Mother.”

“Ada, tell me you don’t mean it.”

“I already haven’t slept well. Don’t keep me from my supper, too.” Susanna opened her eyes to the door falling shut behind Ada, all she could see the curve of her cheek, her skirts whipping out behind her. Wouldn’t that girl ever learn to simply walk without striding like a man?

#

Mrs. Hammond was playing with Clairy, and in the meantime James sat at the dining room table, across from Ester, neither of them speaking, just waiting for Ada to call.

Ester snatched the phone from the middle of the table the moment it made a sound. James listened to her tell Ada about the river, about Clairy. “I have a confession to make,” she finally said. “I told James.”

He couldn’t hear Ada’s end of the conversation, but Ester soon spoke again, sounding irritated. “It’s better that he heard it from me than from the news, don’t you think?” She went quiet again for a few moments. “Yes, he’s right here.” She passed the phone across to James, and took herself to the liquor cabinet.

“Hello,” James said.

“You’re angry with me, aren’t you?”

It was a strange way for Ada to ask, James hadn’t expected it at all. He ran a hand back through his hair. “The last time I was this angry with you,” he said, “you were dragging me off into the woods on a pede hunt, and totally unwilling to tell me anything about it.”

She laughed quietly. “Christ. Don’t forget, do you?”

“I don’t know, somehow that pales in comparison.” James stood, walking out into the hall. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because if anything happened, you’d believe it was your fault, and that’s exhausting.” He heard rustling, as if Ada, too, was moving about. “Because I knew you’d insist on martyring yourself, and I’m tired of convincing you not to.” She paused. “You tried to do that, didn’t you?”

“Ester throws a stronger punch than I expected. Then she pointed a gun at me.”

Ada’s laugh was surprised. “That’s my girl.” She let out a sigh. “My mother came to the Settlement.”

James walked into the sitting room, put his hand on the window frame and watched the street. Everything was orange, as the sun set. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“It wasn’t. And I was cruel and I hate that, but I don’t have time to worry about her, right now.”

For a moment James listened to her silence, could almost see the expression Ada wore when she was gathering her thoughts.

“You know,” Ada said, “when Corbley leaves, you and Micah are going to be the only friends Ester and I have left in Carlston.”

“Will you promise me something?” James asked.

“Depends, I try not to make promises I know I’ll break.”

“Stay safe,” James said, “and steer clear of Hosanna Reyes.”


	24. Seventy Times Seven

With nothing else to occupy his time, James had taken up a full half of Clairy’s nursery, and set himself to building a dollhouse. Leftover building materials from the house had been shoved into a far back corner of the attic, and Ada had held onto them for repairs. While he was looking for the proper glue, he had chanced upon the original floor plans for the house, and so he was recreating the house in miniature, matching the rooms to the scraps of wallpaper.

It was painstaking work, which kept his mind off of just about everything else. Clairy watched him from her crib, and when she babbled at him he talked back, about out-of-fashion wallpaper that would probably be replaced by the time she was old enough to play with dolls, how her mother would probably find some minor mistake in his work. “Of course, knowing my luck,” he said, watching Clairy gnaw on her fingers, “you’re going to hate dolls, and you’d rather play with bugs and things that don’t belong to you.” 

Clairy laughed and kicked her feet in the air, and James smiled, bending to make sure there were no wrinkles in the wallpaper he was gluing to the miniature wall.

Micah tapped on the door. “General Pierce is here. I took him in to the parlor.”

James nodded, and started to extricate himself from the half-finished dollhouse. He kissed Micah’s cheek, a hand on his shoulder. Micah turned his head toward James, and James couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “Are you alright?”

“I just want all of this to be over,” Micah murmured. “Does Clairy need anything?”

“She seems fine,” James said, bending over the crib to pick her up. Clairy shrieked and grinned, thumping a tiny hand against his shoulder. She threw her weight to the side, reaching for Micah.  “Will you come down with me?”

Micah glanced at him, surprised, and nodded. He let Clairy catch hold of his hand, and smiled at her. It was Clairy that let them pretend things were alright.

James wasn’t sure what to expect, going down the stairs. Inviting Pierce into his house—into Ada’s house, and he didn’t doubt that she would give him an earful about that, when she heard—wasn’t a situation he had ever prepared for. He wanted to talk, he said. What was there to say?

Pierce was stood in the parlor, looking at the wedding portrait. Ada had insisted on hanging it there, in a frame with a price that had made her wince. “Appearances,” she said. All James could think of, when he looked at it, was how damned uncomfortable it had been to sit there in a freshly starched suit, playacting for the photographer, as if they hadn’t done enough of that at the wedding.

“She looks a damn sight better than I do,” James said.

Pierce laughed softly. “It’s the same with mine.”

“You married quite a bit earlier than I did,” James said, sinking into a chair. Clairy had shoved her other hand into her mouth, and watched Pierce with wide dark eyes. Micah hovered by the window, trying to catch a breeze.

“Can’t say that did my portrait any favors,” Pierce said, turning to take a seat. “Never seen an officer as out of sorts as I was. Miriam is well,” he added.

James met his gaze, feeling the involuntary tightening of his jaw. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“We have four children.”

“Congratulations.”

“Do you have plans for more?” Pierce asked, nodding at Clairy.

“That would require any kind of certainty that I’ll live long enough to have more,” James replied.

Pierce’s cheeks reddened above his beard—James hated that beard—and he glanced away. “I apologize.”

James leaned back in his chair, keeping a firm grip on Clairy as she tried to dive toward the floor. “When did you take up with Aaron?”

The red turned into ashy grey, and from the corner of his eye, James saw Micah look sharply toward him.

“He believed that it was important I look for you,” Pierce said, refusing to look James in the eye. “That my insight would be useful.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.” Anything he could do to sever the hold Aaron had on him, he would do, but he needed to know what was at play.

“We had gone to seek your sister’s family in Janesville,” Pierce said, “and it was after that we returned to the Settlement.”

“So was it Aaron who saw an opportunity waiting to be exploited, or you?”

“What the hell do you care?” Pierce asked, finally looking at James.

“I think you know.” James stared back. “Is this Aaron’s game, or yours?”

“You think this is about you?”

“Aaron’s, then.” James smiled bitterly. “You used to be better at defenses than that. I hope for your sake that you’re not attached to him.”

Pierce looked like he wanted to hit James, fight the way they had used to. “This isn’t what I came here to talk about.”

“Then what did you come here for?” James asked. “Besides telling me about your wife.” He wouldn’t call Miriam by her first name, not anymore. It wasn’t his place.

Pierce let out a breath, glanced at Micah, who was pretending to ignore them. “I already told you. I want to know why you didn’t kill me, that last time.”

That last time, and not all the times before? Maybe the last time gained more significance in hindsight, after the war was over and it became the last time. When it had happened, it hadn’t been a unique event. The times that James had been left to bleed out when it was Pierce’s responsibility to put a bullet in his skull just to be sure, the times that James could have captured him, but let him slip away. Neither of them ever wanting to admit defeat, neither of them ever quite wanting to win.

James shrugged. “I didn’t want to kill you.” He could try to ask himself why, but with Pierce, none of it was ever easy to put into words. The war wouldn’t have been the same, without Pierce. Besides Aaron, no one was so consistent in James’ memory of it. Every single time he was close to death, but avoided it, it was because of Pierce.

Clairy shrieked and tried to throw herself forward again, and James only just caught her, setting her gently down on the floor to crawl.

“Fast, isn’t she?” Pierce asked quietly.

“Stubborn and reckless,” James said, “like her mother.”

“I don’t know,” Pierce said, “that sounds a lot like you.”

James got up on the pretense of keeping an eye on Clairy, slowly following her around the room. Clairy spied Micah and went straight to him. Micah bent, swinging her up over his head and back down into the crook of his elbow, kissing the top of her head. Clairy giggled, holding tight to his shirt collar. James couldn’t help the start of the smile—but he became conscious of Pierce’s eyes, and glanced away, toward a picture on the wall. Clairy’s baptism.

“Does your wife know?” Pierce asked.

“Does yours?” James turned only slightly, enough to see Pierce look to the window. She did, then, and it was a point of contention between them.

“Frankly, it’s none of your goddamn business,” Micah said flatly.

Pierce looked up, startled, and the poisonous look on Micah’s face surprised even James. “You come over here to stir up trouble because what? You have some unresolved doubts about the war? You’re not the one facing the firing squad.”

“Micah,” James said.

“Shut up,” Micah snapped, “I’m tired of this. I’m tired of trying to act like everything is fine.” With Clairy balanced in one arm, Micah leveled an accusatory finger at Pierce. “I don’t give a single solitary fuck about your feelings. You come in here because you know this idiot,” he jerked a thumb at James, “won’t say no. You come in here because you think that uniform gives you every goddamn right.

“Men like you, the rules are different, aren’t they? You can carry on in secret with Reyes because you wear that uniform and you drag men like James and me to the grave. What kind of God-damned sacred duty is there in that?”

Pierce sat very quietly, hand on his knee.

“You don’t come looking for the person you feel guilty about to absolve you,” Micah spat. He looked at James, hitching Clairy a little higher in his arms. “Finish whatever the fuck you were going to talk about.”

He stormed out, and James drew a hand down his face. Pierce didn’t say anything at first.

“You know,” Pierce said, hardly above a whisper. “In another life, we might have been friends.”

James gazed at him. “In another life, you might have helped me win the war.”

Pierce considered that for a moment, and got to his feet. “I should go. I’ve troubled you enough.”

James didn’t argue. He took Pierce to the door, and wondered what significance this moment would gain when it was past.

“Pierce,” James said, remembering what he had wanted to ask, “how was Hannah, when you were in Janesville?”

Pierce looked at him, and for a moment, James saw pity in his eyes. “I’m sorry. She’s been dead for three years.” 

#

Ada drew in a breath, standing at the foot of the steps. Mr. Yu was nervous as well, though he was doing his best not to show it. (He was failing, Ada had learned that he babbled about legal history when he was anxious.) “…the original courthouse burned in the Great Fire, and the Council of Bishops chose to take that as an opportunity to rebuild the Sanctum grander than it had been before. They anticipated they would need the increased space—”

“Mr. Yu,” Ada said, “all due respect, but I don’t care.”

“Of course.” He glanced at Corbley and Hanasut, and steeled himself, tugging at his vest. “We should go in, then.”

Ada picked up her skirts, starting forward before she lost her nerve. She would rather face another water-starved pede than the Council of Bishops. Maybe it was foolish, but she had expected a judge. When Mr. Yu had told her that the trial was being conducted by the Bishops, she had truly started to feel afraid.

“Are the, ah, attendants really necessary?” Mr. Yu asked.

“I think they’re very necessary, Mr. Yu.” Ada had been forced to leave the Finnbar house in the wee hours of the morning, before a crowd gathered, and had spent the better part of the dark hours in the law offices, trying to make up for the lost sleep in a horribly uncomfortable wooden chair. She had been so anxious about the trial that she had forgotten to call home, and now she felt guilty. Ester was probably worried.

The front desk was tall and dark, and Mr. Yu approached the man seated there with his chin lifted and his shoulders back, all traces of anxiety perfectly concealed. Ada tried not to look around, feeling the eyes on her.

“Name?” the receptionist asked without looking up.

“Thomas Yu and Mrs. Ada Metzger,” Mr. Yu said.

Very slowly, the receptionist looked up, his eyes settling first on Mr. Yu, and then on Ada. The quiet stare over his spectacles made Ada determined not to look away, gazing back. “You’re expected in the Central Hall,” the receptionist said coolly.

“God be with you, sir,” Ada said.

The receptionist didn’t reply. Mr. Yu cleared his throat slightly and nodded for Ada to follow him.

“Rude bastard,” Corbley muttered under his breath. Hanasut whispered something in Kelchak, and he was silent. They whispered a great deal, these days, and Ada wished she didn’t feel as though she was neglecting her friend in the last weeks they had together.

She found herself thinking on the night before, when she had gone up to the roof for air, and found Josephine there, staring at the sky.

“Stargazing?” she asked.

Josephine looked at her, and then back to the sky. “You haven’t seen it yet, have you?”

Ada followed her gaze, and saw the blinking lights that were most certainly not stars. “What is that?”

“A station,” Josephine said. “An Earth-born station. It’s been there for a few years now.”

“Why haven’t I heard of it?”

“The church forbid anything to be printed about it. It’s gossip, rumor. But it’s there.” Josephine looked at Ada again. “I know why the Earth-borns are here. I just don’t understand why you’re here.”

Ada gazed at her. “I care very deeply about him.”

“You can’t win,” Josephine said. “Fighting it will only make it harder for your daughter.”

Ada held back the initial spark of anger, looking skyward. “I felt as though my mother never fought for me. I hated her for it.”

“You think this is fighting for her.”

“He adores her,” Ada murmured. “I didn’t expect him to be so devoted.” She felt Josephine’s eyes on her. “I can’t rob my daughter of the thing I always wanted.”

For a moment, they stood together in silence. “What do you think he will say,” Josephine asked, “when I tell him who I am?”

Ada considered. “Nothing, at first. He won’t know what to say. After that… I imagine you’ll become well acquainted with the depths of his capacity for regret and guilt. If I know anything about him, I know how much he berates himself for being imperfect.”

She gazed at the Earth-born station, not knowing what to feel. That after all this time, all these generations, they would be this close… she felt as if she had been at sea for an eternity, and only just now sited the faint darkening on the horizon that meant shore. An unknown shore, for certain, and sure to slip away from her gaze as quickly as it had appeared, but there it was. Her heart ached.

They had been free, when they came from Earth. Freer than the Covenant was, at any rate. People who had come to build something for themselves, for their children. They hadn’t meant to make this.

Standing before the doors of the Central Hall, Ada felt that shore slipping away behind the horizon, the current pulling her back into the abyss.

Rows upon rows of Bishops in their black, a white cross cut across the front of their shirts. Ada willed her breath to be steady as Mr. Yu guided her forward to her seat.

Josephine did not believe she could win. Ada knew that she had to.

#

One of the last people James wanted to see was Pastor Richards, but that didn’t prevent the man from intruding. James was back in Clairy’s nursery, working on her dollhouse so that he didn’t have to spend too much time thinking about the trial that was beginning in the Settlement. He refused to go downstairs, so Pastor Richards came up.

“Good afternoon, Pastor,” James said, keeping his head bent to the task of gluing together a miniature dining room table.

“Good afternoon,” Richards answered, hovering awkwardly in the door. Clairy was sleeping in her crib, a line of drool from her mouth to the blanket she was laying on. “It is my understanding that the trial began today.”

James didn’t reply, pinching a table leg to its right place while the glue dried.

“Mr. Metzger,” Pastor Richards said, “I must urge you to think of your daughter.”

James lifted his head, gazing at Clairy’s crib. “If you’ve come to ask me to surrender myself and repent, I can’t do that.” Ada would drag him out of Hell just to send him back herself.

“Clara is young still,” Richards said, “and it would give your wife the chance to remarry.”

“She doesn’t have it in her to be a preacher’s wife.” James looked at him. “I know you’re not fool enough to think you can make her into one.”

Richards looked away, embarrassed.

“No one would marry my widow,” James said, setting the miniature aside to dry. “And I suspect the list of men she would tolerate is very short.”

“It is dangerous for her to be there.”

“There’s nowhere in the Covenant that’s safe for her,” James replied sharply. “Not anymore.” He scowled at Richards. “You want to help Ada, Pastor? Stop preaching about how I need to repent, go to the Settlement, and help her. Do whatever it is she needs you to do. You won’t win her favor by damning me.”

Richards’ face flamed scarlet. “You’ve damned her as a heretic.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” James replied, “she was a heretic long before she met me.”

Clairy woke and began to cry. In a moment, James was on his feet, pulling her from her crib, trying to soothe her. In a moment or two she settled, her tiny fingers digging into the sleeve of his shirt.

James turned, and found Richards still there. “Did you want something, Pastor?” he asked.

Richards shook his head. “I’ll pray for you,” he said, turning away. 

#

They began with a list of crimes, and Ada was forced to sit and listen to all that James had been accused of. Most of it was inarguable—the war, the inevitable deaths and destruction, the challenge to the church’s authority—but then they began to get more specific. They read to her descriptions of pastors tortured and murdered by heretics, landowners and their families who were brutalized, killed.

Ada listened, kept her face still, and her hands clasped in her lap. How much of it was true, she had no idea. James didn’t talk much of the war, but he had muttered occasionally about things that had been twisted, falsified to turn against him people that might otherwise have heard him, and joined. More than that, it wasn’t as if a mob that was barely an army could truly be controlled, once their rage and resentment was unleashed against those who had come to symbolize all the evils that had ever befallen them. To lay the blame for all of that at James’ feet—it was to make an example of him.

“Do you deny these charges?”

Yu cleared his throat, and stood. “We do not, Bishop.”

“Then state your purpose in this court.”

“We seek a sentence of lifelong service and atonement.”

James had gone so quiet, when Ada told him. _“You want me to build a church.”_

_“Isn’t it better than being killed?”_

It seemed possible, at the time. Now, looking at the Council, Ada wondered. She felt fear, and worse, she felt doubt.

Men had openly hated her before, she was accustomed to that—but the way the Bishops looked at her now, with unabashed disgust, as if she were the lowest creature they had ever seen, that was a new kind of hate.

“Mrs. Metzger,” one asked her, “do you fully understand the extent of your husband’s crimes?”

Ada stood, raising her gaze to meet the asker. He was eighty if he was a day, and looked as though he had not smiled once in his life. “I do, Bishop.”

“And yet you still defend him.”

“The forgiveness of Christ is eternal,” Ada said, “my husband is not the man he once was.”

“If that is so,” another bishop said, “why does he refuse to repent?”

Ada drew in a breath. “He considers it a matter between him and God. As Christ warned against making a show of religion, so my husband despises making a show of repentance. He will not find the forgiveness of the people, and so he will not seek it, only that of God. He would atone quietly, if this holy court would give him the chance.”

“Public repentance is a holy act. That John Metzger does not seek it is testament to his continued disobedience to the church.”

Yu cleared his throat. “If I may, Bishops,” he said, “Mr. Metzger will be in service, and thus obedience. He has abided the terms of Sanctuary quite admirably, and it is said that in the past few years he has been a well respected member of Carlston’s community.”

“While he lived under false pretenses,” a younger bishop said, “Deceiving everyone he met. Mrs. Metzger,” he asked, looking as though he already knew the answer, “were you not deceived, when you married him?”

To lie to the church was to sin against God. All children were taught that. Ada swallowed the racing of her heart. “I had no knowledge of his past, that is true, but it has since been resolved between us, and I bear no grudge against him for it. He has always treated me well, and I could not ask for a better husband.”

“I’m curious, then, as to when you learned your husband’s true identity,” the bishop pressed. “In his report to us, General Pierce claimed that you were entirely unsurprised at their arrival. And your husband was granted Sanctuary as General Pierce was on his way to Carlston.”

“Is Mrs. Metzger being accused of something, Bishop?” Yu asked.

“Not yet,” the Bishop said mildly.

“I had suspicions early on that my husband was not who he said he was,” Ada said, “but when I learned the truth, I was the one who urged him to seek Sanctuary. If you believe that I knowingly withheld his identity from the church, it is not true—I only thought to protect my family.”

“Bishops,” Yu said, “Mrs. Metzger is a woman in good standing with the church. Even as Carlston has lacked the funds to build a proper church, she has ensured that they have a pastor to minister to the people, and had her daughter baptized in her own home. I see no reason this holy court should doubt her testimony.”

“No reason?” the aged bishop asked. “Curious, I thought we were questioning the wife of a heretic and murderer.”

And on and on and on in circles, until the Bishops grew tired of listening to her and adjourned. Nothing accomplished, and everything still uncertain.

“Please wait here,” Yu said, leaving Ada on a corridor bench. “There are a few things I must do, and then we can discuss what to do next.”

What to do next? What was there to do, except pray?

“How are you doing?”

Ada looked at Hanasut, surprised. “I’ve been better,” she said.

Hanasut nodded, and watched the people passing them by. “I have become grateful that the humans I met before I came to this planet were not as the ones here.”

Ada’s heart jumped. “You’ve met other humans? Earth-borns?”

“Some,” Hanasut said with a nod. “Others came from colonies. This place is not the only one where your people have settled, as it is not the only one mine have called a new home.”

Other colonies. Ada had never given it any thought. When the Covenant was settled, it had been unique. Perhaps the station above them was not Earth-born at all, but some other colony, a colony that was nothing like the Covenant. People there who could not fathom what the Covenant had become.

Carlston was not far enough away from the church. Another human colony, though…

“Mrs. Metzger.”

Ada looked up, and felt her face pull reflexively into a scowl. “Mr. Reyes.”

Reyes smiled at her, keeping a respectful distance. “How good to see you.”

“If only I could say the same.”

He laughed as if it were a joke. “The trial has begun, then?”

“Yes.”

Reyes nodded, the easy expression fading somewhat. “I was just here with my mother,” he said, “talking to some old friends.” He nodded to an older woman coming up along side him.

_“Aaron would not be what he is if he had been born to any other woman,”_ James had said. _“All she cares about is advancing the status of her children, and Aaron means to make his advancement on this trial.”_

“Mrs. Reyes,” Ada said, “it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Mrs. Reyes’ smile did not touch her eyes. “Mrs. Metzger. I’ve heard so much about you.” It felt less like a greeting and more like a threat.

“Mrs. Metzger!” Yu had spotted her, and was running back down the corridor. “Pardon me,” he said to the Reyes, “but we must go right away.”

“Of course,” Aaron said smoothly. “We will have to talk some other time.”

Yu ushered Ada down some narrow hall to a door that opened to a waiting car, with dark windows. “What’s going on?” Ada asked, fidgeting as Corbley and Hanasut pressed in on either side of her.

“There’s a mob out front,” Yu told her, “but don’t worry, we can avoid them.”

Ada saw the mob, as the car slipped out of a narrow side street. So many people, all screaming things she couldn’t quite hear but knew were about her. She felt the tremor come back into her hands, and it was all she could do to keep breathing as she was whisked away back to the safety of the Finnbar house. 

#

Josephine never once heard Mrs. Metzger talk about the trial days.

They were obviously hard on her—she grew moody, and secluded herself in her rooms, only emerging to eat, and to meet with Mr. Yu. Sometimes, late at night or very early in the morning, she could be heard pacing restlessly, and dark circles always showed under her eyes. Her retreat made everyone else anxious.

“What if we miss our chance?” she heard her mother saying to Ruth. “What if the trial is lost before we ever see him?”

Josephine supposed that, besides her Kelchak attendants and Mr. Yu, she was the one who saw Mrs. Metzger the most. Every night she found Mrs. Metzger on the roof, staring at the station as if it gave her hope.

She didn’t turn, as Josephine closed the door. “You know I asked him once, what he thought it would be like if the Earth-borns ever reclaimed this place. You would have thought I spit on his mother’s grave.”

Josephine sat next to her, looked up at the blinking lights.

“He still believes this place can be saved,” Mrs. Metzger said. “And I don’t think I ever have.” She laughed a little. “Maybe that makes him a better Christian than me.”

Mrs. Metzger didn’t talk about Josephine’s father the way everyone else did. She freely said he was infuriating, stubborn and stupid and reckless—but at heart, she said, he wanted to do the right thing. _“Doesn’t mean he always does.”_

“We’re going to Carlston soon,” Josephine told her. “My mother’s anxious. She’s waited my entire life to see him again.”

“I’m sorry I can’t go with you,” Mrs. Metzger said. “I would have liked to show you the town myself.”

Josephine felt like she would have liked Ada, if she were married to anyone else in the Covenant. 

#

Richards was up at the front of the tavern, preparing to give his sermon. Clairy had fallen asleep in James’ arms, and she was drooling on his shirt.

Richards sighed, and put his notes away, as though he had given up on something. “I want to speak honestly with all of you today,” he said. “I have been praying a great deal, asking the Lord for guidance.” He looked as though he was wrestling with something, and it was apparent that this wasn’t what he had meant to talk about. Richards’ sermons were rehearsed. This was not.

“It is easy,” Richards said, “to forget one’s own faults and failings. I have not always been the minister that you ought to have. I have prioritized material concerns over spiritual ones. I have allowed myself to be blinded by my own will, instead of seeking the will of God. I have forgotten, at times, the compassion of Christ. I have even,” and here Richards hesitated, “I have even coveted another man’s wife.”

Ester glanced at James, the both of them wondering where Richards was going.

“We are all sinners,” Richards said, “it is our imperfection, our failings, that demanded the sending of Christ. If we are to be God’s people, we must recognize those failings in ourselves, before we look for them in others.” He looked out at his congregation, more earnest than James had ever seen him. “We must seek to nurture the compassion and forgiveness of Christ—which is what I believe Mrs. Metzger is doing.

“She has given us a home here, and though I have not always agreed with her methods, I believe that Mrs. Metzger has done her best to create a just city, a city where the poor do not go hungry or unsheltered, where every man makes enough to feed his family. Always, her first concern has been the people of Carlston—and she has offered dozens of us a fresh start we would not have had otherwise.”

Richards clasped his hands together. “Mrs. Metzger has offered forgiveness and mercy where we have not. She has raised up the downtrodden and brought down or made gentle those who would be tyrants. How often have you remarked to me that you would never call another city home, because of your trust for her?

“Why, then, did you cease to trust her when her mercy no longer met with your approval?”

Richards was quite the tale spinner, when he wanted to be. The trust he spoke of, the mercy and forgiveness—that wasn’t the Carlston or the Ada that James knew, and Richards didn’t—couldn’t—believe in what he was saying.

James could feel the change in the room. This was the power preachers wielded that he didn’t trust, even now. They would believe Richards even against their own experience.

“It is true, that great harm has been done,” Richards said. “Lives have been lost, suffering has been felt. This cannot be undone. But we have the power to prevent further suffering, further loss of life. That, friends, is the work of Christ. Not vengeance.” He gazed at them all. “Which is why I have decided to go to the Settlement, and aid Mrs. Metzger however I can. I invite whoever is able to come with me, and testify to the mercy of God.”

“Amen!”

James turned, searching out the voice. Henry Randall had stood, shaking off the grasp of his mother. His sister Joanna bolted to her feet, shouting another amen. There was a chorus of them through the room, enough that it ought to have felt comforting, but it wasn’t.

“That is all for today,” Richards said. “Go in peace.”

James lingered as the room cleared out, waiting for Richards to gather his things. “What was that about?”

Richards glanced at him. “I don’t like you,” he said, “and I’m no friend of yours. But you’re right, that Mrs. Metzger would never forgive me for letting something happen to you. So I will go to the Settlement, and I will tell everyone about her justice and mercy. If, in the end, that keeps you alive—well. At least she will be happy. That is the best I can hope for.”

James gazed at him for a moment, and nodded. “Thank you.”

Richards nodded, looking away and leaving with his bible and the unused sermon.

Ester was waiting for James by the door, her arms folded. “That was… something.”

“Yes,” James agreed. “Something.”


	25. Promised Land

Josephine had never been so far from the Settlement. Mallory seemed impossibly small, but Mrs. Metzger said Carlston was smaller still, but growing. “Or, at least it was. I don’t know what it will be like when all of this is said and done.”

They had to hire a driver to take them to Carlston, down a long road with nothing but fields and agricultural buildings. The edge of the wilderness loomed in the distance, all blue and dangerous.  She could pick out the hills that had been taken in a wildfire, the growth still new and low. Mrs. Metzger spoke of it so casually—all the monsters of the wild and how often they had nearly killed her. She wore high collars to hide the scars on her torso. She had even survived a Devil’s Tongue, washed wildfire ash from her hair.

What a difficult place. 

The dust was red as rust and choked the air behind them with a thick cloud. The driver hummed a hymn under his breath. “Just took a whole group of people out of this place the other day,” he said idly. “A preacher and a bunch of faithful on their way to the Settlement.”

Josephine wasn’t listening closely at first, she was more interested in the forest of thin blue trees that rose around the road where Mallory ended and Carlston began. Native underbrush grew up thick between them, more native plants than Josephine had ever seen in one place. “I heard they were going to testify on behalf of the heretic,” the driver said.

Josephine looked sharply at him. “What?”

“The preacher wouldn’t stop spouting off about mercy and forgiveness,” the driver said with a shrug. “Lots of prayers and hymns on that drive. Can’t imagine what they’ll be like once they actually get where they’re goin’.”

Josephine glanced back at her grandmother, who was listening attentively, her fingers clutched around her bible.

“Have you ever met him?” Josephine asked. “The heretic, I mean.”

The driver shook his head. “Nah. Seen him, though, back when he was sheriff. Would never have guessed who he really was. Seemed too quiet.”

The trees gave way to fields again, and the men and women harvesting crops paid them no mind. A little farther out, Josephine could see a herd of cattle grazing, and brightly feathered chickens foraging alongside them. Then, just beyond the water tanks, the town, hardly more than a few streets, the buildings all only a few years old, teetering on the edge of the river.

Josephine directed their driver as Mrs. Metzger had told her to, and he brought them up to a big house—big for Carlston, anyway—overlooking the river, where Josephine saw a woman working over ledgers, and a man holding a baby, watching the car approach. He said something to the woman, who looked up and rose, standing at the top of the steps with her hands on her hips.

It was Josephine’s mother, who got out of the car first. Josephine watched as the man’s face changed—recognition, shock. He put the baby in the woman’s arms and ran down the steps like someone half his age, meeting Leah half way and throwing his arms around her, picking her up and spinning her around. Leah made a sound halfway between laughter and weeping.

The driver had gone very quiet, and got out to fetch their bags without saying anything.

Ruth stepped down, helping Josephine’s grandmother out of the car. Josephine watched her father approach them a little more hesitantly, embracing Ruth with tears in his eyes, and seeming almost afraid of her grandmother, who only put a hand on his cheek and smiled.

He didn’t notice Josephine at all, until she stepped out and began to walk toward the group. He looked between her and her mother. “You’re Leah’s daughter?” he guessed.

The women all watched her, and Josephine felt her mouth press into a thin line. “She raised me,” Josephine agreed, “but I was born to Miriam Hall.”

For a moment, he stared at her as if he had been punched. Josephine gazed back, and watched him raise a hand to his mouth, whispering, “My God.”

Josephine smiled without warmth. “Hello, Father.” 

#

Aaron slipped out of the dark house, shrugging on the drab brown jacket that made him largely indistinguishable from any other man. He had cut his hair, though it pained him to do it, to a perfectly respectable style and length. Aaron thought it made him look older, but things being what they were, that wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened.

It was good to be free of the watchful eyes of the Bishop’s Men. He hummed a tune, smiling as he reflected on the handsome young man he had spent the evening with. Aaron rather liked him, and wasn’t opposed to the thought of seeing him again. He was a bit cocky, maybe a little too sure of himself—but Aaron liked that. It was a good change from previous company.

The route he took home brought him near the Finnbar house. Aaron paused under a lamp, considering, and turned down the side street that brought him to a servant’s gate. It wasn’t terribly late, yet. He thumbed the bell, and waited.

“Can I help you, sir?” asked an aged housewoman, who peered at him with watery dark eyes between the curls of wrought iron.

“If Mrs. Metzger is still awake,” Aaron said, “tell her Aaron Reyes would like to speak with her.” He had meant to have this conversation at another time, but the time felt right. He felt lucky.

The housewoman gazed at him a moment longer. “Wait here, sir.” She took the soft glow of her lantern with her, leaving Aaron to lean against the cold brick in the dark, listening to the slow night traffic and the sound of insects. A pack of feral dogs was baying somewhere in the city.

After a time, Aaron saw the glow of the lantern again, and turned to the gate. It was not the housewoman.

Mrs. Metzger held the lantern aloft, standing a few paces back from the locked gate. “Reyes. I thought it was someone playing a prank on me.”

Aaron smiled the smile that had won him plenty of warm nights. “Might I come in?”

Mrs. Metzger answered with a question of her own. “What do you want?”

“Just to talk,” Aaron said. “Aren’t I allowed to speak to the wife of an old friend?”

He could see just enough of her face to make out displeasure. “You’re going to have to do better than that. I was enjoying a book, before I came out here.”

Aaron laughed, and put his hands on the gate. “Alright, then. I want to make a trade.”

She lowered the lantern slightly, casting the shadows across her face at an eerie angle.“A trade.”

“A mutually beneficial arrangement,” Aaron said. “I think we can each give each other something the other wants.”

She was growing impatient with him. “Dancing around the point won’t get you through this gate, Mr. Reyes.”

“Give me Carlston,” Aaron said, “and I will make sure James gets out of this with his life.”

All he could really see of Mrs. Metzger was her eyes. “You want the mine.”

“I want the title of landowner,” Aaron said. “Although the wealth of your mine wouldn’t hurt at all.”

“And what is my family to do, if we make this trade?”

“Let me inside,” Aaron said, “and I will tell you.”

She hesitated only a moment, and then she moved the lantern to her left hand, pulling out the key to the gate. Aaron stepped back, allowing her to open it and admit him on her own terms. Mrs. Metzger scowled at him. “This isn’t an agreement.”

Aaron smiled at her. “Not yet.”

She kept her distance from Aaron, walking back to the house. “I was under the impression you wanted James dead.”

Aaron glanced at her. “How has the trial been going, by the by?”

Mrs. Metzger turned a poisonous scowl on him. “I think you know the answer to that.”

“The mobs have been something remarkable,” Aaron commented, as if he were speaking of the weather. “One wonders if any work is getting done in the Settlement besides calling for blood.” The news had been filled with whatever glimpses of Mrs. Metzger could be caught, generally between the courthouse and a vehicle, the high proud posture only narrowly seen between the flanking lizards.

“One wonders if you ever grow tired of hearing your own voice,” Mrs. Metzger replied coolly.

“The speculation about you has only grown,” Aaron said. “I even heard one man say that you were a witch who consorted with the Devil at midnight.”

“My mother would be proud,” she muttered, reaching the door. She brought Aaron into a warmly lit corridor, returning the lantern to the housewoman, who bowed slightly and tottered off.

Mrs. Metzger whisked down the hall without waiting for Aaron to follow, leaving him to catch up to her. “Will any of the Finnbars be joining us?” Aaron asked.

“They are away,” Mrs. Metzger replied. “Mrs. Finnbar left the house in my care.” She gestured for Aaron to go ahead of her into the library. “We can speak privately here,” she said.

Aaron sat at a small table, and Mrs. Metzger sat down across from him, clasping her hands together. “Tell me how you would keep him alive.”

Aaron talked, explaining the plan he had made with his mother, and Mrs. Metzger listened, her face stony and unflinching. All it would take, he told her, was pulling the right strings among the Council, and everyone got what they wanted. “You, of course,” Aaron said, “can choose to do whatever you like, after the fact.”

Mrs. Metzger gazed at him for a long moment. “You fucking coward,” she said, her voice soft and low.

Aaron shrugged. “Hardly my worst sin.”

She stared at Aaron with nothing short of contempt. “He loved you.”

Aaron’s face hardened. “That was his mistake. Do you care more about his pride or his life?”

Mrs. Metzger pressed her hands flat together. “I… must discuss this with my family.” She gazed at him, daring him to pressure her.

“It would be best not to mention my involvement,” Aaron said, “if you want him to agree.”

“If I don’t mention you,” Mrs. Metzger answered, “don’t you think he’d guess, anyway?” She stood, and pushed a pad of paper and a pen toward him. “Your contact information, if you would.” She smiled coldly. “So I can tell you my decision.”

#

James sat next to Mrs. Finnbar on the porch, not sure what he should say, if anything. He felt like it was all too much and too little, that he couldn’t hope to explain himself.

“Your wife told me you called yourself Finnbar.” She was gazing at the river, worrying at a ring on her finger. “You know, I never gave up hope that you would come home.”

James let out a breath. “If I had known… about Josephine…”

“If you had known, then Clara would not have been born.” Mrs. Finnbar looked at him, smiled. “If I have learned anything, it’s that regret does nothing but punish the person who feels it.” She laid a hand over his, thin fingers tightening in a grip that was still remarkably strong. “I couldn’t be more proud of you.”

James stared at her, baffled. “After everything I’ve done?”

“It’s not heresy to fight for the lives of others.” She released his hand. “I’m no stranger to regret. I wondered what I did wrong.” She paused, shook her head. “It took watching Josephine grow up for me to make sense of it.

“I thought, when you were with me, that you didn’t have the same anger Leah had. I was wrong. You had it, you only aimed it higher.” Mrs. Finnbar looked at him. “You weren’t happy in the Settlement. I know you tried to be, but you weren’t.” Mrs. Finnbar searched his face. “Are you happy here?”

James nodded. “I am.”

Mrs. Finnbar smiled. “Then I’m glad.”

#

Once they were all in a room together, Leah, Ruth, and James could not stop talking. Everything that had happened since they last saw each other, things they remembered from their childhood. They hardly noticed Josephine at all, which in many ways was a relief.

The steward tapped her lightly on the shoulder. Josephine had been startled when she first saw him, thinking he must be a relative of Reyes. “Would you like anything, miss?” he asked, giving her an amiable smile.

“A drink, please.”

“Wine?”

“That would be wonderful.”

She kept out of the way and listened to them talk. Every so often her father’s eyes settled on her, as if he had to keep reminding himself she was real. Josephine said nothing to him, and he said nothing to her.

He was telling them about something that had happened early on, a story involving a pede, when there was a firm tap on the door. Miss Webb stood in the hall, looking grim. “You need to talk to Ada,” she said, “now.”

James rose, and a silence settled over the room in his absence. Leah and Ruth murmured to each other, as if there was some secret not meant for Josephine’s ears.

Josephine stepped out into the hall, leaving her glass of wine, looking at the house. It didn’t have the established air of old houses in the Settlement, but it gave off the distinct manner of being meant to impress, with what resources there were to do so. She could easily imagine Mrs. Metzger in this house, unyielding and blunt as she was. This was her home.

Even as their host, it felt like her father was as much a guest as they were.

“Absolutely not!”

Josephine looked through the half open door, spying her father speaking on the phone, and Miss Webb standing nearby with her arms folded. Her father paced a bit, a scowl deep on his face. “Why would you let Aaron talk you into something like this?”

Josephine couldn’t hear what Mrs. Metzger’s answer was, but she could hear that it was angry, and loud enough it made her father wince.

Farther up in the house, Josephine heard the baby start to cry. She found the stairs and made her way up, following the sound to the nursery. She bent over the crib, lifting Clairy into her arms, rubbing her back. “Hello, little sister,” she murmured, rocking from side to side. Clairy went quiet, staring at Josephine with wide eyes.

Josephine smoothed Clairy’s black hair. “I’m so sorry, little sister,” she murmured. “You didn’t ask for this.” She turned, and saw the dollhouse, not yet finished. “Did our father make this?” she asked, trailing her fingertips over the roof. Clairy began to chew on her fingers, and was quiet.

Josephine sat on the floor of the nursery with Clairy, picking up a stuffed dog that Clairy immediately reached for, giggling.

That was how their father found them, Josephine playing peek-a-boo with Clairy and her dog. Josephine’s smile faded when she noticed him standing at the door. She looked away. “Isaiah Allan,” she said.

“What?”

“He was my friend.” Josephine looked up. “Then he went away to war, and he never came back. Another friend, Rachel, she lost her fiance in Gethsemane.”

He gazed at her. “I’m sorry.”

“Is that all you have to say?”

“You aren’t the only one who lost friends.” He stepped into the nursery, eased himself to the floor across from her. Clairy crawled to him, and he picked her up, kissing her cheek, before setting her down in his lap. “I am sorry,” he said again, “for all the pain I caused you and Leah and Mrs. Finnbar.”

Josephine pursed her lips. “You could have come back. You could have at least written.”

Her father didn’t answer that.

“Why didn’t you come back?”

He let out a breath. “I was afraid,” he said. He smiled sadly. “I was in love.”

She knew without asking who he meant. “What was my mother to you? My actual mother, not your sister.”

“She was my friend. At least, that’s how I thought of her. She was kind to me, I don’t know how she felt beyond that.”

Josephine realized she didn’t know, either. All Mrs. Pierce had said was that it wasn’t love. She looked at Clairy, who had crawled to the floor again, in pursuit of her dog. “They raised me to think you were my uncle,” she said. “I suppose they thought it would be easier. It didn’t require explaining why I didn’t have a mother. I suppose I wanted a better story from you.”

Clairy crawled to Josephine, trying to climb into her lap. Josephine picked her up, turning her around to sit. “Do you love your wife?” she asked.

Her father rubbed his face, as if he were very tired. “Not in the way you’re asking.”  

“What about Mr. Deering?”

His eyes settled on her, and he nodded. “Yes. Very much.”

“If you love your daughter, you’ll let her grow up with a different name.” Josephine looked down at Clairy. “If she has to go through life as a Metzger, she’ll never thrive. Mrs. Pierce told me that’s the reason my surname isn’t Hall.”

Her father sighed. “There are days,” he said, “I wonder if we wouldn’t all be better off if I had died the day the war ended. Or before it began.” He shook his head. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, now.”

“What does that mean?” Josephine asked.

“Nothing,” he said, “only that Ada is about to make a deal with the Devil to try and save my worthless life.”

#

Ada stewed silently in her fury. She had told Reyes she made her decision, but they had agreed to go over the details in person, so he had told her to come to his home, given her a date and a time, and when Ada had arrived—under the cover of night so she would not be seen—he was not there.

Instead, she was received by his mother. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Metzger, Aaron was called away on an urgent meeting—but I am more than capable of discussing the arrangement in his absence.”

Ada didn’t doubt that. If half the things James said about her were true, Hosanna Reyes had probably orchestrated the entire thing herself.

She had only brought Corbley. She liked Hanasut, but she needed someone she trusted completely.

Hosanna stirred cream into her tea. “It’s a pity you’re already married, Mrs. Metzger. I would have liked to have a daughter-in-law as industrious as you.”

“With all due respect, Mrs. Reyes,” Ada answered, “there is extremely little that would make me well-suited to be a part of your family.”

Hosanna smiled. “I thought the same, when I married my husband. I much preferred his brother, but, alas, my husband was the heir. Do you consider yourself better suited to being a Metzger than a Reyes?”

“I was best suited to be a Carl.”

Hosanna had the same smile Aaron had, but less arrogant, more dangerous. “There would have been no peace between you and any of my sons, but together—imagine what you might have accomplished.”

Ada’s fingers tightened around each other. “I’m quite happy with my present husband, thank you.”

“Are you? I find happiness in marriage to be a quaint ideal. Of course, you haven’t been married long.” She looked at Ada over her tea. “And you’re willing to sacrifice everything you’ve worked so hard to build for him. That kind of loyalty is admirable.”

No one knew better than Ada all the sacrifices she had already made. It wasn’t about James, and it wasn’t about Carlston. First and foremost, it had always been about Ester, and now Clairy. “I want to speak with them directly,” Ada said. “See them with my own eyes, to be sure that you can deliver your end of the bargain.”

“You understand that such a meeting will not be easy to arrange.”

“You understand,” Ada returned, “that without that meeting you have no arrangement.”

“It will take time,” Hosanna said, “you will have to keep the Council of Bishops from making a decision until then.”

“Mr. Yu is a very competent man,” Ada said, “and an expectant mother might have a health emergency that requires her to be absent from court for several days. The stress of a trial, after all.”

“Of course,” Hosanna murmured. “I will arrange the meeting, then.” She considered Ada for a moment. “It is curious to me,” she said, “how quickly your interest was caught.”

Ada stood, and Corbley stood with her. “Mrs. Reyes,” she said, “I am always a woman ready to leap headfirst into the unknown.”

“This,” Corbley said as they left, “is the stupidest, most reckless thing you’ve ever done, and I’ve seen ya do a lot of stupid shit.”

“You’re not coming with me,” Ada said, “you don’t get a vote.”

Corbley was quiet for a moment, opening the door of the Finnbar car for her. “Ya know it ain’t personal,” he said, quietly.

“I do,” Ada said, weariness settling on her. “I just—I’m going to miss you.”

Corbley put his arm around her shoulders, tucked his chin on her head. “I’m gonna miss you too, ya fuckin’ lunatic.”

Ada smiled, leaning her head on his shoulder. “Will you tell your kids about me?”

“Yeah. Somebody’s got t’tell them to stay the hell away from humans.”

Ada laughed, the first time she’d laughed in weeks. “I’ll miss you so much, you bastard.”

#

Ruth couldn’t quite grow accustomed to it, seeing James grown, seeing him that old. They had been apart three times as long as they had been together. He was a stranger to her—but still her brother, still in many ways the boy whose nightmares she had soothed, when she was too young to know what she was doing. Too young to be mother to her siblings.

All things said, though, she and Hannah must not have done too badly. James doted on his daughter, could hardly bear to have her out of his sight for more than half an hour. If he heard her cry there was nothing he would not immediately set aside to go to her.

“What are you going to do with more than one?” Ruth asked him one afternoon, when he was feeding Clairy in the kitchen. “You can’t comfort everyone at once.”

James shrugged, smiled. “Won’t stop me from trying.” His smile faded, and he looked at her more seriously. “Your last name was different, the last time I wrote to you.”

“Halpert was a scoundrel and I was glad to be rid of him,” Ruth said, not wanting to summon up the memory of her husbands.

“And Price is…?”

Ruth looked away. “He died.” She didn’t want to tell him how, and James didn’t ask. “His name was Matthew.”

He paused, wiping a green smear of puree from Clairy’s cheek with a thumb. “I’m sorry, if I had anything to do with it.”

“You can’t blame yourself for everything, Jamie.” Ruth found a kitchen stool, and sat. “I’ve had a good life.” She watched him for a moment, sad-eyed and attentive. “What happened with Reyes?”

He let out such a weary sigh. “I don’t know. It went bad. Maybe it would have been better if we never met.”

“You spent so much time with him—”

“Too stubborn for my own good,” James muttered. “I thought—once the war was over, once we had won—things would go back to the way they were before.” He scraped the cup he was feeding Clairy out of. “Apparently he didn’t share that delusion. All for the better, I suppose. In the end.” He tapped Clairy’s chin with a knuckle, making her smile.

“Jamie,” Ruth said, “Josephine said your wife was making some kind of deal…”

James went quiet, his shoulders slumped. “I told her a thousand times she should just let them take me, but she won’t hear of it.”

“What is she going to do?”

James looked at her. “She’s going to try to get all of us exiled.”

#

“You know the funny thing,” Ada had murmured, “when I first had suspicions about you, Corbley asked me what I was going to do. I told him then, I’d sacrifice you for Carlston, if I had to. You wouldn’t have been the first. Suppose the Lord must be contrary, putting me in the position to sacrifice Carlston for you.”

“Ada,” James said, “if you do this, none of us can come back from it.”

“There’s nothing we can do now that we could come back from,” she said. “Will you trust me? Please?”

James let out a breath. “I trust you,” he said. “I trust you more than anyone.”

#

“I ought to be collecting these headlines,” Ada said. “Personally, I think ‘Whore of Babylon’ is a touch dramatic, but I suppose the smaller presses have to do something to attract readers. Maybe I could print them off, put them in an album with the family photos.”

“Ada,” Susanna pleaded. “You don’t have to keep doing this.”

Her daughter looked so worn, and Susanna regretted leaving her alone in that house. She had taken up residence in a boarding house for the time being, and had told Ada where she was, but had not sought her ought. Ada had come herself, early in the morning, saying she wanted to talk.

Ada smiled a little. “Mother,” she said, “have you ever known me to let anyone bully me into submission for long?” Ada sat with her hands on her belly. She was only just starting to show. “I have a plan—or the start of a plan, if things go through as they’re supposed to. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Susanna watched her anxiously. “When you say plan, I begin to think it’s not entirely legal.”

Ada shrugged. “That should be the least of your concerns, right now, I think.” Her eyes wandered around Susanna’s temporary quarters, unfocused. Even her glasses did little to disguise the purple smears under Ada’s eyes. She wasn’t sleeping, on account of that man.

Susanna remembered how polite he had been, the first time she met him, how he had mediated between her and her daughter, and she hated him for it. The only good thing he had brought into their lives was Clara. The floods should have taken him, not Nathan. It would have saved them all a world of trouble.

“What do you mean to do?” Susanna asked.

Ada bit her lip. “If things go through,” she said, “if I get the meeting I demanded, so I can make sure—then I will be giving up Carlston. And I’ll be going away. Far away. With my family… and we won’t come back.” She met Susanna’s gaze. “I came to ask if you wanted to come with us.”

“You’re… leaving?” Susanna asked. “To where?”

“Earth,” Ada said. “Or some place like it.”


	26. Salvation

_“Officer Masters report to Command immediately.”_

Pema Masters cursed under their breath, yanking on their uniform as they tumbled out of their bunk. Four years watching that damn colony and not even being able to touch the ground, and still somehow they always seemed to be needed most when they were hardly out of bed.

Pema scrubbed their face with one hand, flinching under the harsh lights of the corridor, and the sterile smell of disinfectant. They always hated the first few days after the cleaning bots had been by. The fumes gave them a headache.

_“Officer Masters—”_

“I’m on my way,” Pema snapped into their comm. “Christ,” they muttered under their breath. “You’d think the world was ending.” 

There did seem to be an unusual amount of bustle in the base, a lot of running around. Pema frowned, hitting the elevator doors just before they closed, squeezing in between two maintenance crew who looked not at all pleased at the intrusion. Pema wondered how big a normal sized elevator would seem in comparison to the glorified mail tubes on the Sapphire Base. Downright luxurious, they imagined, like an apartment you couldn’t afford on an astronaut’s salary.

“Masters,” a sharp voice said as Pema stepped onto the Command floor. “How long have you been here?”

“Over four years, Commander.” Commander Moon was the biggest hard-ass Pema had ever met, fifty years old and tough as nails. Pema would have hated her if she weren’t also a vast improvement on her predecessor, an indecisive danger to everyone around him who should have been shot out the airlock when no one was looking.

Moon gave Pema a hard look. “Patil tells me you’ve had the most direct communication with the Covenanters out of any officer here.”

Pema nodded. “Yes, Commander, I’ve spoken several times with Covenanter bishops and statesmen. I was only recently successfully able to negotiate for a small shuttle to be permitted to land, so that—”

“I remember,” Moon said. “I sent Kimura, Temitope, and Wexler to negotiate for permission to establish an embassy. They were unsuccessful.”

That was one way to put it. The group had only barely escaped imprisonment, for seeking to expose the Covenant to its diabolical influence. “Commander,” Pema asked, “I can attempt to negotiate another landing, but—”

“No need,” Moon interrupted. “We are circumventing the Covenanter church, this time.”

Pema very much did not like the sound of that. “Commander?”

“Take your pick of the crew, Masters,” Moon said. “You are to take a shuttle just outside of their capital, where you will meet with a handful of people I am assured have some influence in the church.”

“To what end, Commander?”

“Asylum seekers,” Moon said. “Or, if you’d prefer, political exiles.” 

#

Ada felt nausea rising as she sat before the Bishops. They were growing impatient with her, wanting to put an end to things—but Yu was doing admirably at his job, flinging up precedent and scripture wherever he could.

“Some years ago the Covenant endured a different war,” Yu said, “it was decided then that to make martyrs of the instigators would only strengthen the heretical rebellion. I argue that the same applies now. No one man in the previous war was so symbolic of the rebellion as John Metzger is of this one. To kill him will be to reinvigorate his heresies, and to create those who would be heirs to those heresies.”

“To allow him to live is to show weakness and fear,” a bishop answered. “The good Christians of the New Covenant have suffered greatly at his hands, and his continued refusal to repent for that suffering cannot be ignored.”

Ada could not help herself. “The war began because of suffering!”

“Mrs. Metzger,” Yu whispered, going pale.

“Let her speak,” a bishop said. “Explain yourself, Mrs. Metzger.”

Ada drew in a breath, standing. “Scripture tells us to use our wealth to feed the hungry and clothe the poor. If the people of the Covenant are the good Christians you believe them to be, then why is there still such great poverty? You cannot starve your brother and then be shocked when he takes what he needs by force.”

Ada barreled on before fear stopped her. “I will not argue that my husband did not challenge the holy authority of the church, but he did it for the love of his brothers and sisters in Christ. To ease their suffering. That is why he will not repent. If you allow him to live in service, then at least he will be able to atone for the suffering he has caused.”

“Ministers were burned in their churches,” a Bishop said. “How do you answer to that?”

Ada turned to him. “If we are to speak of that then we must speak of the women brutalized by the Bishop’s Men. If we are to speak of that then we must speak of the men who have been tortured and killed for the crime of resembling my husband. If we are to speak of that, Bishop, then we must speak of the children who were made orphans by the ‘good Christians of the New Covenant’ through poverty and war. Where is the love of Christ in that?”

He was about to reply to her when an orderly burst through the doors and raced to the front of the hall. “Bishops,” the man said, “there is—a group, out front.”

“Another mob?”

“No, Bishop—I mean, yes, but not as they have been. This one came from Carlston. They have a minister with them, he is outside, preaching. I fear violence between them and the mob.”

Ada rose and went for the doors, ignoring Yu’s calls for her. She raced through the halls, reaching the front doors and throwing them open.

Richards was stood on the steps, with his back to her, shouting over the crowd. “—for great is the mercy of God, that even such heretics can be forgiven! The fault lies not with the wife who defends her husband, but in us, whose hearts are too hard to be softened by the mercy of the Savior! When you stand before the gates of Heaven, will you make excuses for your cruelty, or will you tell them that you were righteous?”

There was a chorus of ‘amens,’ Ada recognized some of the faces, but not nearly as many as she had expected. Richards must have picked up people along the way.

“Sing,” Richards commanded, “sing the praises of the Lord and His mercy! Sing as you were taught to sing, in praise of God!”

They must have planned something like this, they started up on a hymn, voices rising to drown out the booing crowd they were separated from by a tense wall of Bishop’s Men, hoping to prevent a riot.

“Pastor Richards!” Ada called, and he turned, clearly surprised to see her. She made her way down the steps to him. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to help,” he said, and nodded at the people singing. “So did they. I financed the trip myself, so no one would be left behind because they couldn’t afford it.”

“With what money?” Ada asked.

Richards glanced at her. “For… a few years now, I’ve been setting aside part of my salary to build a church. So it would not be a burden on you. It seems I will have to wait a little longer.”

Ada threw her arms around his shoulders in a hug, shaking slightly. Richards froze, hands hovering in the air over her back. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you so much.”

Richards patted her lightly on the back and cleared his throat, stepping back. “You should go. We will likely be forced to leave, soon. I will be here every day, until the trial is over.”

“God bless you, Pastor,” Ada said, and turned back to the doors, where Corbley had appeared to pull her back into the safety of the court house. Someone had recognized her, and the mob was baying for blood again. The Bishop’s Men pushed them back, and Richards kept his people singing, and that was the last thing Ada saw before the doors slammed shut behind her. 

#

If there was anything Pema hadn’t counted on, it was how normal the Covenant sounded. Hidden in the dark, they could hear the hum of insects, the distant barking of dogs, the sound of traffic. If they hadn’t known, they would never have guessed they were in a colony that had been isolated for so long that—for all anyone knew—they might have become genetically distinct.

That was part of the reason Moon wanted these ‘political exiles.’ Not only were they born and bred Covenanters who would have more knowledge of the internal workings of the colony than any observer from the base could hope to get, but they were living breathing members of a human population that had not had contact with the rest of their species in nearly three hundred years.

There had been doubt that the Sapphire Settlement had even survived. Contact with the colony had collapsed because of internal war on Earth, and in the time it took for Earth to turn its eyes once more to its first distant settlement, the exact location had been lost or destroyed. Earth moved on, built other colonies.

Pema had been sixteen, when the first images of the rediscovered colony were released. No one had been able to talk about anything else. In the time it took for them to send a ship, to build a base—they learned that their cousins no longer called themselves the Sapphire Settlement, and they no longer welcomed any contact with those outside of it. They were the New Covenant, now, the explorers were told—and they were there to serve the will of God.

Pema was entirely uncomfortable with the idea of being on Covenant territory without the express permission of the church. If they were found, the best case scenario was that they escaped and set back relations between the Covenant and Earth even further. The worst… well. Pema didn’t even want to speculate.

They had chosen a small party, supposing it would make them less noticeable. The communications officer who had spoken with the Covenanter involved said that it was all second or thirdhand communication, that the people they were meeting with had no direct access to contacting the base. Pema had been encouraged to take not only a pilot and anyone who might be useful in reassuring their potential asylum seekers, but protection.

So, seven people. The pilot, Pema, two other communication officers with negotiation training, and three trained soldiers. “If any of this goes south,” Pema told Moon, “remember it was under your command.”

Moon cracked half a smile. “If it goes right, Masters, remember it was under my command.”

Pema supposed if they died, at least it would likely ruin Moon’s career. That was something.

The house had been described to Pema as a “small, secondary home of an influential family”—and if that house was small, then Pema wondered just how damn big their primary home was. It was dark, except for a light in one window, but the door was promptly answered when they knocked. The man who answered was maybe forty or so, looked them up and down, and nodded. “Come inside, then.”

He held an electric lantern, which looked jarring next to the antiquated style of his clothes. Not when-the-colony-was-settled antiquated, but pre-space travel antiquated. Pre-antibiotics antiquated. Pema felt as if they had wandered onto the set of a bizarre anachronistic movie.

“This way,” the man said, leading them down a hall to the one lit room, where there were only two women, and two Kelchak.

Pema wasn’t sure what greeting was appropriate, so they settled on a salute. “My name is Officer Pema Masters, I have come representing Commander Moon of the Sapphire Base. To whom am I speaking?”

The younger of the two women stood, looking at Pema and their companions with something like wonder. “So it’s true,” she murmured. She looked at Pema, and almost smiled. “My name is Ada Ca—Ada Metzger,” she corrected herself. “I am so very, very happy to meet you, Officer Masters.”

#

Micah felt cold, when James told him. “Exile?”

It was late, and James was on his third drink. Micah had never known him to have more than two. “I don’t know why I was surprised Ada jumped at the chance,” he said. “The thing she likes best is just leaving. She’s obsessed with Earth, with any place that isn’t here.” He sat on the bed, a hand on his face. “She says this way we can stay together. That we’ll get a fresh start, Clairy won’t have to grow up somewhere… where being my daughter will ruin her life before it even starts.”

He looked at Micah like something in him was broken. “So I guess… I wanted to know if you’ll come with us.”

Micah stared at him. To leave behind everything—his friends, any chance of ever seeing his mother again—

“I won’t blame you, if you stay,” James said, looking away. “After everything I don’t feel like I deserve to ask anything more of you.”

“You’re drunk,” Micah said.

“You haven’t seen drunk.” James looked at his glass in disgust, put it on the bedside table. “Christ.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

If James left, if Miss Webb and Mrs. Metzger left, what the hell would be left for Micah? Everyone in Carlston knew what he had been. What he would likely have to be again, because he couldn’t imagine being a real houseman, not just one in name. But to leave, to never see home again, to be somewhere he knew nothing about… it terrified Micah.

And Clairy… he loved Clairy. He couldn’t imagine not seeing her grow up, not knowing what kind of person she became.

Slowly, James spoke again. “Ada says… she asked, specifically, when she met with the Earth-borns. She says that once we leave, she and I can divorce, and then she intends to marry Ester. That’s something you can do, outside of the Covenant.”

Micah looked up sharply.

“If…” James said, “if you decide to come with us… then I want to ask you to marry me.”

Micah had a hard time breathing.

“I don’t ever want to leave your side,” James said.

“You son of a bitch,” Micah whispered, surging across the space between them and kissing James, tears on his face.

James put a hand on Micah’s back, whispered against his mouth, “Is that a yes?”

Micah sat back, put his hand on James’ cheek. “Don’t you ever fucking leave me, James Finnbar.”

#

“I miss you so much,” Ester murmured, half-curled on the bed. Ada had called late, no one else was awake.

“I miss you, too, Star,” Ada said. “It’ll all be over soon. This place—it won’t be able to hurt us anymore.”

They didn’t talk about what they both feared, that giving Carlston to Reyes would ruin it, that the people would suffer for it. They couldn’t protect everyone, Ester knew that. She was just glad that Ada finally did, too.

“Did you do a reading for me?” Ada asked, quietly.

“I did,” Ester said, looking at the table where the cards were still laid out.

“What did it say?”

“Nothing we don’t already know,” Ester said, sitting up. “Hardship, suffering. Then, a new start. A second chance.” It didn’t necessarily mean Ada’s plan would work as expected, they both knew that.

Ada was quiet for a moment. “Do you think I made the right choice, Star?”

Ester closed her eyes. “I’m never going to tell you that taking a risk so that Clairy can grow up somewhere she doesn’t have to be afraid is the wrong choice. Not ever.”

“I went in for an examination again today,” Ada said. “The baby… he’s doing well.”

Ester’s ears caught on that word. “He?”

“Yeah,” Ada said. “He.”

#

Every day, Pastor Richards was on the steps of the courthouse, countering the mob with sermons and hymns, and every day he and his flock were shepherded away by the Bishop’s Men before violence could break out.

It made Susanna anxious, the odd hours Ada kept so that she could avoid the mob. She was at her daughter’s side, now, though they spoke little. She was permitted to sit in the back of the hall while Ada stood trial, and it made her sick to her stomach. Ada never once backed down, arguing fiercely for mercy, for a sentence of service. “My contacts will pull the strings behind the scenes,” Ada had told her, “I’m not signing anything over to them until I hear the sentence of exile.”

She would not tell Susanna who her contacts were, or what assurances they had given her.

“Is it really worth it?” Susanna asked, “Leaving your home, your family, your friends behind for him?”

“What home?” Ada asked. “My family is coming with me. I have no friends left here. And it’s not for him.”

No friends, she said, and yet every day Pastor Richards preached about mercy, and every day the crowd listening to him, singing with his flock, grew a little larger. They were still outnumbered by the people that came to demand justice, but the Settlement was splitting. Richards had divided them, and put pressure on the Bishops to hear the people calling for mercy. Give us mercy, they called. Give us salvation.

“He’s not doing it for James,” Ada muttered one morning, “he hates James for marrying me. Thinks he corrupted me.”

“Must you be so cynical of everyone?” Susanna asked.

“Maybe if I knew them less well,” Ada said, with a wry smile. “If you knew them as well as I did, Mother… well, I suppose you would still like them better than I do. You’re more forgiving.” She let out a breath. “You didn’t tell me if you’re staying or going.”

If she lost Ada, if she lost Clara… she had nothing. Nothing but graves dug by the water. “I have so little left, Ada,” she said. “I won’t lose you and Clara, too.”

Without speaking a word Ada grasped her hand, and watched the street.

Every day in court was the same. No progress made, nothing gained. Every day, Ada’s ability to behave as she ought frayed a little further. Whatever it was her contacts had to do to pull their strings, Susanna wished they would work a little faster.

Ada was suffering headaches, for which she refused anything but a glass of cool water. “They’ll go away when all of this is done.”

Give us mercy. Give us our salvation.

“Have you thought about a name?” Susanna asked, while she and Ada sat together one night, Susanna reading to her, as she had used to do when her daughters were small.

After a moment, Ada nodded, hands on her belly. “Jacob. Jacob Adam.”

“Your great-grandfather was named Jacob.”

“That’s not why I chose it.”

Susanna sighed. “I don’t understand you.”

“Nor I you, but here we are.” Ada massaged her temple. “God will bring us justice.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

#

Josephine heard her grandmother sigh. “I am too old to start over,” she murmured. She patted James’ cheek, smiled gently. “You will do well, wherever you go. I know that. I wish you well.”

He bent to hug her, and she pressed a kiss to the top of his head, whispering something in his ear.

“I can’t leave her,” Leah murmured, squeezing her brother’s hands so tightly her knuckles were white. “But I’m going to miss you terribly. Take care of yourself, Jamie.”

All Josephine could say to him was, “Take care of Clairy.” She would never know her sister, never know the brother that was on the way—and though she knew them, Miriam Price’s children would never know they were kin. Six brothers and sisters, and yet she was alone.

“I want to go with you.”

Everyone looked at Ruth. She had stood, her hands clasped together. “Jamie,” she said, “I’ll go, if you’ll have me.”

For a moment they just looked at each other, and James grasped her shoulder. “I would never turn you away. Not ever.”

Josephine stepped out onto the porch, looked out at the dusty little town. People didn’t speak much to them, recognizing them for what they were. Josephine had gone out a few times, and heard the mutterings. They had been lied to, they had been betrayed.

They had been allowed to like and trust him, and they couldn’t forgive that.

She went to the far side of the house, where there were few windows, few passersby who would overhear her, and made a call. Her father had told her first, what was likely to happen, and it had given her days to ponder what move she could make, what next step would secure her future.

“Hello?” Reyes answered, wary. “Who is this?”

“Hello, Mr. Reyes.”

There was hardly half a breath’s silence. “How did you get my contact?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Josephine replied. She put a hand on the porch rail, keeping an eye out for eavesdroppers. There were dust devils dancing on the fields, twisting their way to the sky like they were reaching for Heaven, or something further.

“Do you have a moment, Mr. Reyes? I have a proposal for you, one which I would like you to give some serious consideration to.”

#

The Council of Bishops announced that they had decided to give a sentence by sending Ada a letter. It was only a few short lines, typed and signed by the five most senior bishops. _The sentence of John James Metzger will be delivered on Friday the Eighteenth of July._

She steadied her breath, laid the paper face down on the dining room table so that she didn’t have to look at it.

“Alright?” Corbley asked. He was waiting at table while Hanasut prepared something that was meant to reduce the effect of stressors on his system, which in turn would help to keep seizures at bay.

“Friday,” she said, “It’ll all be over on Friday.” She hadn’t heard from Reyes, had no idea how successful they had been. The knowledge that he gained nothing if she lost didn’t much comfort Ada. She didn’t want to try to contact him—the less they were shown to be in contact, the better.

Ada laid her hands against the table, letting out a breath. She had to get her composure before her mother saw her. “He hardly let me sleep last night,” she said, putting a hand on her belly. “Kicks more than Clairy ever did. Hope to Hell that there aren’t fighting rings where we’re going, or I’ll never be able to keep him out of them.”

“It never fuckin’ ceases to terrify me that your kind have to carry ‘em inside yourself.” Corbley shook his head. “Thought for sure you were gonna die when Clairy was born.”

“Are Kelchak born in incubators?” Ada asked, in what was meant to be a joke.

“We call ‘em hot nests,” Corbley said, “but yeah. Ain’t nothin’ like… all that.”

Ada drew herself up, mentally steadying herself, compartmentalizing as she was so good at doing. Put the fear away, don’t look at it. It won’t serve you.

You can’t do anything if you listen too much to your fear.

“Ada?” Her mother stood in the door. “Is something wrong?”

Ada picked up the letter, and handed it to her mother. She watched her mother’s face shift, the slight tightening that denoted her anxiety. “I will pray,” she said, folding the letter. “For you and your family.” She turned to leave.

“Mother,” Ada said, “thank you.”

Her mother looked at her, and nodded slowly. “Please, Ada,” she said. “Get some rest. As much as you can.”

Rest. Everyone talked of rest as if she could reasonably close her eyes when her future, the future of those she cared about, hung by an insect’s wing. Worse, it hung on her faith in Reyes.

“I had a dream last night,” she told Corbley. “We were all of us on a fishing boat, out on the sea. We tried to come into port when the tides were shifting, and a storm brewing. There were children there, and I knew they were mine, but they were older. Lanky, weedy little things, but quick, reliable. The boat—tipped over. Strange thing was I don’t remember the water being cold. But the undertow, it was ripping us back out to sea.

“All I could think was, I have to get to my children. I don’t know what I thought I could do for them, but I had to get to them, so I fought against the waves, against the tide, to pull them to me. Hold them close.” Ada found her way to the window, light from the garden pouring in.

“If you’re about to say ya saw Christ standing on the waves, pullin’ ya out of the water—”

Ada laughed, shook her head. “No. I woke up before I reached them.” She rubbed her face. “I didn’t use to put any stock in dreams.”

“Do ya now?”

“I don’t know.” Ada drew her hands down her face and sighed. “All I know is that I can’t wait to put this place behind me and never look back.” 

#

“Mother,” Aaron said, when his brother left the room, “what do you know about Josephine Finnbar?”

Hosanna looked up from her knitting, eyes pinning Aaron in place. “Why the interest?”

“She’s made herself troublesome,” Aaron said, a finger pressed to his temple. “I want to take her measure, and determine if she’s anything more than a nuisance.” If he had been in the Settlement while she was growing up, he likely would have known everything he needed to—but at that time, he had been quite busy with other concerns.

Hosanna did not answer in a hurry, rubbing the wool yarn between her fingers. “Miss Mary Josephine Finnbar,” she murmured, “was born approximately six months after John James Metzger left the Settlement. Leah Finnbar and Miriam Hall had gone away to the countryside, and returned four months later with an infant girl.”

Hosanna checked her stitching, and the knitting needles clicked together as she worked. “Common wisdom is that the elder Miss Finnbar had fallen back into old habits of money making, and God alone knows who the girl’s father is. Naturally, her already tarnished reputation on suffered further. No one had ever had much of a high opinion about the feral strays Sarah brought into her home, but of the pair, I always had the impression that Mrs. Finnbar’s circles preferred the brother.”

Aaron could imagine it. James had been so deferential, so determined to find approval, even when they had met. Of course people of society would prefer him, quiet and obedient, to his combative sister.

“There’s a flaw in that story,” Hosanna said, “that no one ever quite acknowledged.” Hosanna looked at him. “Ask yourself, why would a young woman, raised in a poor family and resentful of the new expectations placed on her, hire a wetnurse for a child she bore? She would have been nursed by her mother, as would everyone of her peers. She would assume that nursing her child was a natural burden to bear.”

Aaron gazed at her. “She went away… with Miriam Hall…”

“Mrs. Price was once a friend of Metzger’s, was she not?” Hosanna asked, as if she didn’t full well know the answer.

Aaron sat back, processing this, fitting it into what he already knew.

“Beyond that,” his mother went on, “the younger Miss Finnbar is said to be an excellent Christian, committed to charity and with a reputation that is beyond reproach. Does any of that answer your question?”

“Yes,” Aaron said, and a smile started to pull at his mouth. “She’s not that excellent of a Christian. Seems like she has a taste for petty vengeance.”

“Now what good will this do you?” Hosanna asked.

“Oh, quite a lot,” Aaron answered. “Miss Josephine Finnbar is about to become a much more permanent part of our lives.”

#

There was an audience for the sentencing. Ada was glad that at least the trial had been private, because the weight of all those eyes on her, the sound of their muttering, would have been too much to bear.

They were wealthy. She could have guessed that by the lack of open jeering as much as the clothes they wore. The class of landowners, merchants, and ministers—that was who the Council wanted present for the sentencing. The people that they wanted to reassure.

That made Ada very anxious indeed.

There were cameras, too, which she did her best to avoid looking directly at. She would not give them the satisfaction of acknowledging their presence.

She spied a familiar red jacket, Reyes sitting in the benches above, watching with what was meant to look like cool disinterest. He met her gaze, and nodded only slightly, a faint smirk on his face. Ada didn’t feel any better for having seen it.

The bastard hadn’t told her anything about their plan, and even when she had relented and tried to contact him, he didn’t respond.

He stood to gain nothing if she lost—except James’ death.

Ada kept her breath steady, standing as the Bishops filed into the hall. If this went badly, she would kill Reyes, and not quickly. Let him endure it the way she had endured this trial.

“Mrs. Ada Metzger,” the most senior bishop said, “you have come here to stand trial on behalf of your husband, John James Metzger. His heresies and crimes you have not denied, and instead you have made your case on the gospels’ teachings regarding mercy and forgiveness. From this, and from the respect clearly given to you by the minister and people of Carlston, we of this holy court can clearly see the righteousness of your intentions.”

Ada kept her face impassive, but she felt her heart speed up, beating against her ribs like a running hound.

“However,” the bishop said, and Ada’s heart stilled for a moment, her breath caught in her throat. “You have sought a sentence of lifelong service and atonement. Due to Mr. Metzger’s adamant refusal to repent, we cannot permit this. John Metzger must not be afforded any opportunity to spread his heresies further.

“As such,” the bishop said, his gaze rising to their audience. “This holy court has chosen instead to give a sentence of exile. John James Metzger, and those who would go with him, will leave the New Covenant, and shall not return.” He looked again to Ada. “You will be given two weeks to put your affairs in order. May God have mercy on your soul, Mrs. Metzger.”

Ada only became aware that her knees had buckled when Yu caught her, keeping her from falling to the floor. Her breath came in gasps, and the hand she pressed over her mouth, and the murmuring of the crowd above, disguised the relieved laughter as something closer to sobbing.

Her mother ran to her, full of concern, and Ada hid her face from the cameras with a kerchief, tears of relief on her face.

Yu took them to an office where they were to wait, and he could not stop apologizing to Ada. “I thought—I truly believed, Mrs. Metzger, that we were going to be successful—”

“Mr. Yu,” her mother interrupted, “perhaps you would tell me what it is you are owed, in exchange for all your help. I will see that you are paid in full.” She pulled Yu aside, to pay his fee, and then she gently sent him on his way, saying that he had been a greater help than he could possibly know, and God bless him for his Christian heart. “We are no longer in need of your services. Thank you, Mr. Yu, and God be with you.”

“You alright?” Corbley asked quietly.

“I could use some water,” Ada said, and he nodded, and went to fetch it for her.

Hanasut settled next to Ada. “This is what you wanted,” she said, turning her head at an angle to look at Ada in puzzlement.

“Sometimes God is merciful,” Ada said, smiling. “And today, I am thankful.”

They were in the room for perhaps an hour when a clerk came to ask them if Pastor Richards was permitted to see them. “Yes, please, I want to thank him.” Ada couldn’t quite bring herself to stand, she was so tired, and if she stood up, her mother would probably tell her to sit right back down.

Richards arrived with two others in tow—Joanna and Henry Randall. Ada lurched to her feet, and Joanna burst into tears and hugged her. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Metzger,” she said, “I wanted to see you sooner, I did, but Momma—”

“Shh, shh,” Ada murmured, stroking Joanna’s hair. Good Lord above, when had she gotten so tall? She’d be grown, soon. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. Except maybe how you got here, if you’re mother objected.”

Henry spoke up. “Papa let us go, because I said if he didn’t, we’d just run away anyhow, and it’d be safer if he let us go with Pastor Richards.”

Richards sighed. “They were determined to help.”

Ada looked at him. “I want to thank you again, Pastor.”

He didn’t look as if he felt very good about all of it. “I… must confess, this is not the end I hoped for.” He bit his lip. “You’re going with him, aren’t you?”

Ada nodded. “Yes. Please don’t worry, Pastor… the man I intend to sell Carlston to will see that a proper church is built, I’m sure of that.” Reyes would have it built within a year, just to establish that he was a properly repented Christian, and nothing at all like the previous landowner.

“Where do you intend to go?” Richards asked. “I understand that there are… some small human communities in the Kelchak territory—”

“I am not going into Kelchak territory,” Ada said, “we are going… much further away.” She patted Joanna’s back, and held her at arm’s length. “You must take care of yourself, do you understand me? Both of you.” She looked at Henry. “I will make sure that the man who replaces me knows how clever you are. He’ll need an architect… to plan a church.”

She was trying not to cry, she didn’t want to let on how much she feared for them. She doubted Reyes would manage Carlston as she had, doubted that the people would be quite as well cared for, listened to, as she had always endeavored to care for and listen to them. “I will miss you both,” she said, looking between them. “I know you’ll make your parents proud.”

Before she let either of them see the tears in her eyes, she turned back to Richards, and clasped his hands in her own. “Thank you, Pastor,” she said, “without you, all would have been lost.”

Pastor Richards went scarlet, and looked away. “I’ll pray for you and your children,” he mumbled.

Ada smiled and squeezed his hands. “You should go now,” she said. “All of you, go home. And God be with you all.”

She watched her leave, and turned to find her mother looking at her, an odd expression on her face. “You sounded so much like your grandmother, just then.”

“Are you really ready for this?” Ada asked. “To leave all of this behind?”

Her mother looked away. “You’re the only family I have left, Ada. What I’m leaving behind—it’s just an empty house.”

#

Samuel didn’t care what it looked like, the moment he received the news he ran to the house on the riverbank, and didn’t wait for an invitation inside.

The photographs were all taken down from the walls, and boxes filled the sitting room. Metzger was putting baby clothes into one of those boxes, his daughter playing with her toys in a blanket-lined box that was tall enough to keep her in one spot. He looked up at Samuel, and didn’t seem surprised to see him. “You’ve heard, then.”

“How in Hell’s name did you do that?” Samuel demanded.

“I didn’t do anything,” Metzger replied. “If I had been given the opportunity to do anything, I would be dead.” He went back to folding baby clothes, and Samuel could hear footsteps in the floors above, things being packed.

“Where will you go?” Samuel asked.

“My wife tells me we’re going to Earth,” Metzger said, with a bitter tinge to his voice. “The birthplace of our species and our faith, Christ’s own cradle and grave.” He glanced at Samuel. “And you? What are you going to do?”

He was going to go home to his wife, and his children. He was going to be forced to consider what he would do with his life when he retired from the Bishop’s Men, as he would likely have to do soon.

He was going to feel aimless. Lost.

The man that had been his single guiding star for years was simply… gone.

Who had he even been, before John James Metzger became a heretic?

Metzger’s daughter began to cry, and he picked her up, standing and murmuring to her, maneuvering through the boxes.

“Jamie—oh, hello, General.”

Samuel turned, and nodded his head to Leah Finnbar. “My apologies for intruding, Miss Finnbar, I only… wanted to know if you had heard the news.”

Metzger scoffed and shook his head.

“Yes, I… don’t know whether to be sad or relieved.” Miss Finnbar shifted awkwardly, turning back to her brother. “Jamie, what do you want to do with the dollhouse?”

Metzger paused. “I want to take it, if we can.” He turned to look at her. “It’ll be the only thing I have of this place that I can give to her.”

Miss Finnbar nodded. “We’ll have to take it apart, won’t we?”

“Probably, I shouldn’t have too much trouble putting it together again.” Metzger sighed, bouncing his daughter gently. “She won’t even remember this house,” he said, when his sister went back upstairs. “Won’t remember half her family. Mrs. Finnbar was kind enough to give me some pictures, so at least she’ll know what they look like.”

Metzger didn’t want to go, as much as Samuel didn’t want him to go, though he imagined for vastly different reasons. “You have another one on the way, don’t you?” he asked. “I… heard it in rumors.”

“Yes,” Metzger said, not looking at him. “A son. Suppose it’s just as well he’ll grow up far away from here. Not a damn thing I could do for him here.” He looked around at the room, sighed. “Never felt like home and now I don’t want to leave it.”

Samuel didn’t know if he meant Carlston, or the Covenant. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, if I’m not chasing you,” he said.

Metzger laughed softly. “Is this a victory or a defeat for you? Are we still keeping score?”

Samuel smiled a little. “I think it’s a draw. And a damned miserable one, at that.”

Metzger set his daughter back down, and sat to resume packing her things. He looked up at Samuel, after a moment. “Please tell your wife that I wish her well.”

Samuel gazed back at him, and nodded. “I will. She’ll be glad that you did.” He let out a breath. “God be with you, Metzger.”

Metzger nodded. “And with you, General.”

#

Ada did hire Yu for one last thing—drawing up the deed for Carlston. Her mother helped her to pack what few things she had at the Finnbar house, and said very little indeed when Reyes turned up at the door, ready to claim what was his.

Ada sent a housewoman for tea, and took Reyes to the parlor. “I hear that you’ve already begun seeking a minor seat in the Council of Statesmen,” she said, as Yu began to lay out the appropriate documents. “You will have a difficult time, as a single man.”

Reyes smiled. “I shan’t be single for long. I have a fiancee, now.”

Ada could sense that he was fishing for her to question him on it, so she did not. “Congratulations,” she said. “I wish you many happy years together.” She looked at Yu, and signed where she was meant to. Then he turned them to Reyes, who signed them as well.

“It was a pleasure doing business with you, Mrs. Metzger,” Reyes said, shaking her hand with a smirk. “Josephine will be quite happy to have a properly landed husband.”

Ada knew that shock lit her eyes, because she saw the glee in Reyes’ gaze. “Do tell your husband,” he said, “I would hate to not have his blessing.”


	27. As it is in Heaven

“You know what they call us, don’t you?” Pema asked, their head resting against the wall.

Moon glanced over her drink. They were in the mess, enjoying their last night before they became host to Covenanter exiles. “Earth-borns?”

“Sinners,” Pema said. “Heretics. Christ-killers.” They laughed, shook their head. “You think the people back home can be fucking crazy? They don’t have shit on Covenanters. Can’t get more isolated than this, more in control of the whole goddamned society than this. They _hate_ us.” 

Pema sat forward, leaned on the table. “You haven’t been here long, but we are the easiest possible scapegoat they could have. All of Earth’s ugly history is because of sin. The isolation that brought the Covenant into being? A new start. Like the flood, but cleaner. Less death. Starts a new covenant without breaking the old one. Separating the wheat from the chaff. They’re here to build the Kingdom of God.”

“You sound awfully bitter about it,” Moon said.

Pema shrugged, rolled their eyes. “It’s the same bullshit that some of these churches have been spouting for centuries. It’s shallow, conditional. Has all the depth of a puddle under the summer sun. I grew up in one of those churches, of course I’m fucking bitter to find out that after damn near three hundred years they couldn’t come up with anything better.” They rubbed their face. “Wasn’t the damn space age supposed to be about human progress, the best of us and all that?”

Moon laughed, and shook her head. “Masters, somebody who knows their history as well as you do ought to know it doesn’t work like that. We’re not steadily marching forward toward enlightenment, we’re Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the mountain. Just because it’ll probably come rolling back down doesn’t mean we stop trying.” She took a long swallow of her drink. “Can’t all be despair. Heresy and rebellion are like weeds. You rip out one plant and it’s already cast a hundred seeds to the wind.”

Moon sat back, looked into the bottom of her glass. “Look at it this way, Masters: you’ve saved a family from a lot of suffering. That’s got to count for something.”

#

Ruth took one last look at the house where her niece had been born, standing proud on the edge of the river. They had taken their things to the far side of the river, across the bridge, where they were waiting for the Earth-born shuttle.

James came up to stand beside her. “Ester says they’re due to arrive in an hour. They were retrieving Ada and her mother first, just outside the Settlement. She should already be on the base.”

Ruth looked at him. “Could you ever have dreamed we’d end up like this?” she asked. “Out of that musty little Janesville shack and into the stars.” She let out a laugh, shook her head. “Whatever plan God may have, I can’t make sense of it.”

“I don’t believe in God’s plan,” James said. “Not as the preachers use it, anyway.”

“Don’t suppose I blame you.” Ruth folded her arms. “But still… all the chance turns that led us, led you here… there’s something of God in that, I think.” She smiled at him. “I’m glad to have you back, Jamie.”

He smiled, too. One of the first real smiles she’d seen him give, since she came to Carlston. “I’m glad to have you back, too.” He put a hand on her shoulder, sighed. “I can’t believe I’m going to miss this cursed place. It’s almost killed me more times than I care to remember.”

“Ada, too, from the stories she told me,” Ruth said.

James laughed. “Only person I’ve ever met with a bigger death wish than myself. Hope that where we’re going isn’t half so dangerous.”

“I pray your children don’t inherit that tendency,” Ruth replied. “You can trap Clairy in a crib now, but imagine when she’s four or five. She’ll be tottering straight into the deepest lake she can find.”

“I already have nightmares.” James stepped up alongside Micah, putting a hand on his back. Micah half turned, Clairy in his arms, murmuring something to James that Ruth didn’t hear. Ruth liked Micah. He seemed like a good, steady soul.

“May I hold her?” Ruth asked, and Micah put Clairy in her arms, a little reluctantly perhaps. Clairy nestled against her shoulder, perfectly comfortable.

Josephine, Leah, and Mrs. Finnbar had left the morning before. Josephine had seemed eager to be rid of the place, and Ruth couldn’t entirely blame her. It would have been better between them, if Josephine hadn’t known anything at all about James, but what she did know, she didn’t like, and seeing as she would never lay eyes on him again, she felt no need to make peace between them.

Whatever James felt about it, he kept to himself. Josephine was a grown woman, and he had a little girl that needed caring for.

Some people gathered along the riverbank, to see the Earth-born shuttle. The Bishop’s Men that had been lingering in the town stood along the bridge, General Pierce foremost among them. James did not look back at them, nor did Micah or Ester.

Ester paced, anxious to see Ada again. Ruth had spent a little time getting to know her, the incredibly patient soul that always spoke to Ada first, and worried over her well-being. It was easy to see, having gotten to know Ester and Micah, how James and Ada had made something wonderful of their strange little family.

The shuttle, when it came, was not quite like anything Ruth had ever seen. It settled on the fallow field, sleek and grey and bearing symbols and images that Ruth had never seen before. A door was opened and a young… person jumped down, looked at all of them, and nodded. “My name is Officer Masters,” they said, “Mrs. Metzger is quite eager to see all of you.”

There were a few men and women who helped them to load their things into the cargo hold. Clairy was carefully secured in her car seat, and it seemed to Ruth that though the Earth-born officers treated them kindly, they were a little afraid of their Covenanter passengers.

“You should know,” Masters said to James, “that your wife was in labor when we retrieved her and her mother.”

A thick tension settled over them. It was too early, she shouldn’t have been giving birth yet.

Ruth watched the land give way beneath them, Carlston disappearing in a blurred haze of fields and blue, and evenually she could hardly make out what was the Covenant, and what was not. Somewhere below was Matthew’s grave. Somewhere below was Janesville, and all her family there, and the dust of people she had once loved.

James and Ester kept looking at each other, communicating a quiet—but infectious—anxiety. Masters noticed, too. “The medical staff on board are some of the best trained doctors anyone could hope to have. Mrs. Metzger is in good hands, I promise you.” 

#

Ada was arguing, loudly, with the nurse that was trying to keep her in bed. “—I haven’t seen my daughter or my family in months, you are _not_ keeping me from them!”

“I’m not trying to keep you from them, Mrs. Metzger, I will happily let them come to you but you _must_ stay here for now.”

“Give me my fucking clothes and get out of my fucking way!”

“Ada,” Susanna said sharply. “I didn’t raise you to speak that way.”

“Mother,” Ada said, turning. “They aren’t letting me out of the medical ward to see Clairy.”

“You just gave birth,” Susanna said, “they will bring Clairy to you. You’ve waited this long, you can wait another five minutes.” She looked at the harried nurse. “I apologize for my daughter’s poor behavior.”

“Where’s Jacob?” Ada asked, evidently having remembered her newborn.

“He’s just in a routine examination,” the nurse said, “since he’s premature, we want to be thorough. He’ll be returned to you very soon, I promise.”

Ada held out a hand in the nurse’s direction, looking at Susanna. “Won’t let me see my daughter, won’t let me see my son—”

“Ada, you’re being unreasonable.” Susanna sat on the side of the bed, brushing Ada’s hair out of her face. “Here, I brought you water.”

Ada sulked, but she drained the cup, and it was clear she was exhausted, only running on spite and frustration. “I can’t wait to get back into my own clothes,” she muttered. “I’m so sick of dresses.”

Susanna took Ada’s hair down, and brushed it. Ada closed her eyes and didn’t speak. When she had finished brushing, Susanna began to plait it, beginning at the crown of Ada’s head. Ada laid back against the pillow when Susanna was done, and let out a long sigh. “It’s really happening isn’t it?” she asked.

Susanna stroked her hair. “We are in God’s hands now.”

The door opened and Ada wrestled herself up, a smile breaking across her face. “Star—”

Webb paid no heed to Susanna, throwing herself across the bed to kiss Ada, hands on her face. Susanna turned away, and her eyes settled on Metzger, standing in the doorway with Clara in his arms.

“Bring me my daughter,” Ada said, extending her arms. “Oh, Clairy-bell, I’ve missed you.” She kissed Clara’s cheeks and held her close, pulling her husband down for a hug.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“I will be, when those buttoned-up bastards—”

“Ada!” Susanna scolded.

“—bring Jacob back.” Ada looked at Metzger carefully. “How are you?”

“Better, for seeing that you’re alright.”

Ada looked past him. “Is… Micah?”

“He’s with Ruth,” Metzger said, “they didn’t want to overwhelm you.”

Relief spread over Ada’s face. “Ruth came too?”

Metzger nodded, and they all looked up as the door opened again, admitting the nurse, with Jacob in his arms. Susanna knew what Metzger saw, when he stepped forward to take his son in his arms. A tiny baby, even smaller than Clara had been. The same black hair. Tiny hands balled up into fists. “Hello,” he whispered, staring at Jacob in wonder.

“Christ, James,” Ada said, “you’ve seen a baby before.” She was grinning, though, and he laughed.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” he said, “I’m still getting used to them being mine.” 

#

“You’re doing _what?”_ Josephine’s mother shrieked.

Josephine gazed at her impassively. “You should be happy for me, Mother, not many men would marry a spinster.”

“What under Heaven would possess you to accept a proposal from that man?” Leah demanded.

“He didn’t propose to me, Mother. I asked him.” Josephine had laid out her conditions, one by one.

_It will be a marriage in name alone. We will sleep in different rooms, and you will never visit mine. In a year or two, when we have failed to produce a child, we will begin to adopt wards. The Reyes line is already secure, so this should be agreeable to you._

_I don’t care what affairs you carry on, so long as you are discreet. I myself have no interest in them, so you need not fear that I will damage your reputation in that regard._

_You will not mistreat my mother or my grandmother, as I will endeavor to get along with your own family. I will aid you in your political pursuits, and in return you will see that my family is cared for, and protected from the consequences of our relationship to the heretics._

_And if ever you violate our agreement, I will make your life a living Hell._

“Then you’re twice as mad as I thought,” Leah snapped. “After everything that man has done to our family—”

“What did he do that my father was not at least partly responsible for?” Josephine asked. “Tell me, Mother, I’d be interested to hear.”

Josephine watched her mother visibly try to rein in her anger. “That’s what it’s about, isn’t it?” she asked. “About punishing James.”

“You don’t need to flatter his ego, he’s not here,” Josephine replied. “He won’t ever be here again.”

“Enough,” her grandmother said quietly. “I did not come home to listen to the two of you bicker.” Her grandmother gazed at her for a moment. “If this is what you truly want, Josephine, then we cannot stop you. But I ask you to be careful, and to be wary.”

“I am, Grandma. I know what I’m doing.”

“Debatable,” her mother muttered.

“Do you intend to live in Carlston, then?” her grandmother asked.

“No,” Josephine said. “Nor does Mr. Reyes. We will stay in the Settlement, unless there is such business that needs to be dealt with personally. Our ambitions lay here.”

Her mother left the room, letting the door bang shut behind her.

“Give her time,” her grandmother said wearily. “She feels as though she is losing you, and so soon after she lost James and Ruth all over again.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Grandma,” Josephine said quietly. “Not really. I’ll be here every Sunday.”

Her grandmother sighed, and patted Josephine’s hand. “The Lord will watch over you. I trust in that, if nothing else.” 

#

“He’s already gone,” Ada said, when James asked after Corbley. “He waited with me long enough. He’s gone to see his own family.” She smiled sadly, looked away. “Feels selfish, to miss him.”

James laid Jacob in his bassinet, and sat next to Ada’s bed. “It would be selfish to keep him. You’re allowed to miss him all you want.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Ada murmured, a faint smile pulling at her mouth. “Do you ever let anyone else have the last word?”

“Ester, when she pointed a rifle at me,” James said, and Ada laughed.

“I’d almost forgotten about that,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “Where’s Micah? Haven’t seen him since you turned up, and I think I at least deserve a hello.”

“You look like you’re about to fall asleep,” James said, “I’ll tell him to visit you in the morning.”

“God willing, I’ll be back on my feet by then.” Ada gazed at the ceiling. “We have had far too many conversations where I’ve been in a hospital bed.”

James laughed softly. “Well, you’re entirely to blame for some of them.”

“I suppose I am.” She turned her head to look at him. “It’s going to be alright, you know. The things they’ve told me… about Earth, about the other colonies… we’re going to be alright. Better than we ever would have been in the Covenant.”

James sighed, and clasped his hands together. “You know,” he said, “I realized something, just before we arrived here.”

“What’s that?” Ada asked.

“The outside world—they don’t know anything about the Covenant. Not really. A few things that they could observe, that the Kelchak told them, but not anything that can really make you know a place. Because no Covenanters who could tell them, will. Or at least,” he looked at her. “That’s the way it was. Because now, there’s all of us. All of us who don’t have a hope of returning anyway, so why should we be loyal to that secrecy? We’re the only people who can tell everyone exactly how the Covenant operates. We get to write the story.”

Ada stared at him, the realization settling on her. “Christ Jesus,” she whispered. “We get to write the fucking story.” 

#

The next supply ship to the base would not arrive for a month, during which time James was told the base would do their best to provide everything they needed.

No one bothered them, exactly, but they were oddities. The only people on the entire base who weren’t in uniform, who spoke the way they did. They were left to their own devices, mostly, in quarters that felt too small and a mess hall that felt too big. The place he grew to like best, and where he often took Clairy, was a floor they called “the green space.” It was essentially a garden, made to look as natural as possible, with food, and flowers.

“Thought I’d find you here.” Micah leaned over his shoulder, pressed his cheek against James’. “Officer Masters is looking for you.”

“Why?”

“They dug up some old original settlement records. Says we can’t get a whole family tree because they don’t have access to Covenant records but family names should be enough to at least track part of our descent.”

“Why would I want to know any of that?” James asked. He still hadn’t quite made peace with where they were going. Any other colony, he might have been able to adjust to, but Earth—it was because of them that the Covenant was what it was. It was their failure that had allowed those circumstances to arise.

“Trust me,” Micah said, “you want to hear what they found.”

James sighed, and caught Clairy’s hand before she could yank a pansy from the flowerbed, swinging her up into his arms. Clairy shrieked and giggled, clinging tight to his shirt.

He was still getting used to the variety of languages he heard on the base, the chatter he didn’t understand and desperately wanted to. Even the Kelchak dialect he had learned hadn’t seemed as elusive, as foreign as the Earth-born languages he heard now. And it was that, more than anything, that bothered him. The foreignness of his own species.

Masters was in their quarters, apparently on the fifth or sixth family name that Ada could remember from her own lineage, and the astrobotanist from which she was descended through that line.

“Mr. Met—Mr. Finnbar,” Masters said, apparently relieved at his arrival. “I was able to trace the Metzger family—”

“Can we start with the Kader family?” James interrupted. “That was my mother’s name.” He wasn’t ready for his father’s ancestry, not just yet.

“Of course,” Masters said, with only some fumbling. They turned to their database, and after a moment said, “Hasna Kader. She was a pediatrician, she would have arrived in the Sapphire Settlement when she was twenty-nine years old. No children at the time, so they would have been among the first generation born there.”

James paused. “Was she… the only Kader?”

“Yes, as far as my records show.” Masters hesitated. “Is that significant?”

For her name to have been preserved in her descendants, she would have been unwed. James made a dismissive gesture, and braced himself for whatever else he was about to hear. “And Metzger?”

Masters searched again. “Lewis and Henry Metzger. Agricultural workers.”

“Brothers?” James guessed.

“Husbands,” Masters replied.

From the expectant looks that settled on James from Ruth, Ada, and Micah, they had already heard.

“They arrived with three children,” Masters went on, “two sons and a daughter. Thomas, John, and Alicia, who were fifteen, twelve, and eight at the time of arrival.” Masters looked up. “Any other names?”

“No,” James said, a little surprised he could still speak. “Thank you, that’s—more than enough.”

#

Aaron received a single message from Pierce, shortly after the general arrived back in the Settlement.

_I want to see you again._

Aaron gazed at the message a moment, more than sufficiently distracted from the afternoon tea he was meant to be sharing with his family and his new fiancee.

His first thought was derisive. Pierce was lonely now that James was gone. His second thought was worse. He wasn’t so sure that he didn’t want to see Pierce, too. Passing amusements were plentiful, but to have history with someone who didn’t want him dead—Aaron found that was in short supply, these days.

_Surely you have more meaningful ways to spend your time. With your wife, perhaps._

The reply came within minutes, the chirrup of Aaron’s phone drawing the eye of his mother, and of Josephine. The former gave him a disapproving look. The latter only sipped at her coffee. God but he hated how much she looked like James, now that he knew. He had the wife he needed, and with a better arrangement than he could have ever dreamed possible—all for the small price of being haunted by a shadow of a memory for the rest of his days.

At least none of their adopted children would have her face.

_Miriam is gone._

“Pardon me for a moment,” Aaron said, rising from the table.

“Is everything alright?” Josephine asked.

“Yes, fine.” He put a hand on her shoulder, as he knew he was meant to, to keep up appearances. “I’ll be back in just a moment.”

_What do you mean she’s gone?_

_I mean that she took her things, and she’s gone. She’s not asking for divorce, but she’s not coming home._

Aaron drew in a breath, standing in the corridor of his family home, and a moment later, Pierce messaged him again. _When can I see you?_

Aaron’s mouth twisted at the presumption.

_It will have to wait. I’m having tea with my fiancee._

Pierce’s reply was swift.

_When did you get engaged? And to who?_

_I don’t need to tell you when I do everything, General, that is no longer how our relationship operates._ Aaron was angry with him now. _Josephine Finnbar. Your wife’s bastard daughter. Don’t worry, I know full well who her father is._

This time, Pierce’s reply was long enough in coming that Aaron was nearly back in the door when it arrived.

_Jesus Christ, Reyes, is there nothing too low for you?_

Aaron scowled at his phone.

_Considering how badly you want to see me, I could ask you the same thing. If you want so badly to fuck someone who used to fuck James, I’d recommend you make amends with your wife._

#

Ada was with Ruth on the observation deck of the ship when James found them. The ship was called the _Persistence,_ which Ada thought was rather fitting. She sat in an oddly shaped chair with Jacob nursing, looking out at the expanse of stars, distant planets she had never even dreamed of.

“Do you have the slightest idea where we’ll live, once we get there?” James asked.

“Not at all,” Ada replied cheerfully. “But if you want my opinion, it should be near an ocean.” She looked up at him. “I’ve had enough of dust and drought.”

#

Six years pass after the exile of John Metzger and his family. There is no more war. Any threat of heretical rebellion lays under the surface, dormant seeds waiting to sprout again.

In Carlston, a white church stands on the hilltop, with a steeple and a bell. Every Sunday, Jeremiah Richards stands at the pulpit, and speaks on virtue and sin, repentance and salvation. He is married now, to the schoolteacher. They have two young sons, Caleb and Paul, who are always quiet and well-behaved during their father’s sermons.

There is a permanent camp of Bishop’s Men there, now. Officially, their role is to keep the peace and enforce the law. Unofficially, it is to keep a watchful eye on those citizens most suspected of heresy. That many people quietly left Carlston during the first year after the exile, and told no one why or where they were going, is a fact not remarked upon.

The house on the riverbank still stands, though these days the cook and housekeeper is the only person who inhabits it year-round. Mrs. Reyes stays there only for a few months out of the year, to manage business that cannot be done from the Settlement. She brings her two young children with her, a daughter and a son. It is known that they are not hers by birth. The rumor is that she is barren. The girl is eight, named Rachel, and the boy five, named Gabriel. Mrs. Reyes is said to be a good Christian, they say she is a positive influence on her husband.

No one speaks of her relationship to John Metzger, if they know of it. The Reyes family is not one they want to anger.

In the Settlement, Mr. Reyes has become a well-known statesman. He rubs shoulders with bishops, and though many are still suspicious of him, he wields a considerable amount of influence in the church. Where he cannot persuade a statesman, Mrs. Reyes and her mother-in-law can surely persuade a statesman’s wife. It is not for his benefit that they do this.

Samuel Pierce now lives alone in his house, except for his sons. When he returned from Carlston, his wife was gone, along with her things. She stays now in the Finnbar household, and the last time she saw her husband was at their youngest daughter’s wedding. She seems happier now, and is seldom without Leah Finnbar, her closest companion.

In Safe Harbor, what was once the Carl house is now owned by a younger son of the Allan family, who bought up the Carl business after Nathan Carl’s death, and the house after Susanna Carl joined her daughter in exile. Only one Carl grave is ever visited, that of Rebecca Claire, by a retired fisherwoman and a few others, who bring her flowers and scrub the grime from her headstone. Sometimes over drinks, they remember the Carl girls, and wonder at what became of the elder, wonder if she’s still as fiery and stubborn as they remember.

Far away, a Kelchak by the name of Kalumahk stays with his eight children, young Kelchak not yet quite fully grown. He tells them stories of his time with humans, of their odd ways and odder looks. He tells them particularly about Adakaral, as they pronounce her name. The reckless woman who tried so hard to be heartless when she was anything but, the woman who faced monsters to make sure he was alright. He would make sure they met her someday, he said. She would consider them as good as her own children.

And in the shadow of a ship that has been traveling for six years to reach Earth, Ada Carl races to catch up to her youngest child, snatching her up before she can get herself lost or hurt. “Ester Lee Finnbar,” she scolds sharply. “Don’t you _ever_ do that again!”

Clairy has just turned seven. She’s all gangly limbs and wide dark eyes, clinging tightly to Micah’s hand. The only home she has ever known is the ship they’ve just left, and this new world before her, so big and expansive and without walls—it terrifies her.

Ruth helps Ester—the older Ester, the one who now calls herself ‘Mrs. Ester Carl’—with their things. They have had a lot of time to talk about their uncertainties, their fears, their regrets. Ruth finds that she has fewer regrets now than she used to.

Jacob hides behind his grandmother’s skirt, not knowing what to make of the noise, of all the strangers he suddenly finds himself surrounded by. He turns and runs to his father, who has to put down the bag he’s carrying to pick Jacob up, kissing the top of his head and reassuring him.

His name isn’t John Metzger anymore. Now, he calls himself James Finnbar again. James Finnbar isn’t a hated or wanted man. James Finnbar has friends, a family, a new start.

James Finnbar is exactly who he needs to be.


End file.
